


You Just Didn’t Notice

by Fangirlwriting



Series: Rich’s Story [1]
Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Basically Rich’s story with his squip, Lots of Angst, M/M, Post-Squip later on, Pre-Squip, Rich is a lonely bisexual, Rich’s brother is such a good person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-07-14 12:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 52,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16040381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fangirlwriting/pseuds/Fangirlwriting
Summary: There has to be some reason that Middle Borough’s most popular senior is talking to Rich.  Some reason that doesn’t have anything to do with squids, because that’s just bizarre.





	1. Chapter 1

Well, if there was one good thing about high school, Rich was pretty sure it could only go uphill from here. Somewhere in his head he settled onto the fact that if someone looked back and said that high school was the height of their existence, it was actually quite pitiful. Then again, he was pretty much the lowest person on the high school totem pole, so what did he know?

For most of Freshman year, Rich survived by keeping his head down and being the invisible person everyone else saw him as. He never spoke unless called on by teachers, never signed up for any kind of activity, ate alone at lunch, and his grades were average enough that no one picked on him for being smart (or dumb).

The worst part of school was the hallways, because he couldn’t be invisible there; not the way he could in classrooms or the cafeteria— though it was also harder to be invisible there. But in the hallway, there was constant rushing and yelling and shoving kids into lockers (often Rich himself). There was a constant of running into people and tripping over his own feet. The hallways were a battleground. In the classrooms Rich was safe.

He was safe to quietly write notes and ignore people whispering to each other and hunch down in his seat to make himself as small as possible so Jake Dillinger wouldn’t notice his totally-not-staring-at-him.

“Someone’s got a crush,” his brother would tease whenever he talked about Jake.

“What are you talking about, Matt? I’m not gay.” was always Rich’s immediate defense.

Matt would roll his eyes and make some kind of stupid joke about the Nile River before leaving to go get some food.

“I’m not gay!” Rich would call after him.

And he wasn’t. He’d had crushes on girls before.

Didn’t stop his eyes from gluing themselves to Jake whenever he saw him.

That’s what he was doing today. Staring at Jake from across the cafeteria and trying to ignore the way his cheeks were heating up.

Jake was sitting at the silently dubbed ‘Popular Table’ talking to Dustin Kropp while Chloe Valentine and Brooke Lohst were talking about something else. Jenna Rolan was sitting nearby trying to get a word in anywhere while simultaneously typing anything anyone said into her phone. Such was the pre-established “clique” (the only name for it). From what Rich could tell, it was nearly impossible to break through the barriers and enter the inner circle. That group had been established practically since Kindergarten.

Still, Rich couldn’t help but imagine himself fitting in easily there… Chloe rolling his eyes when he said something clever and she didn’t want to admit it. Brooke adding in some kind of sweet compliment about the way Rich had done his hair. Jenna occasionally looking up and raising her eyebrows when he said something noteworthy. Rich leaning casually into Jake as he talked. Just casually leaning against him. Maybe Jake had an arm around Rich’s shoulders. Maybe he was holding his hand. Maybe Dustin Kropp was sitting at a table off in the corner by himself because he didn’t deserve to be as close to Jake as he was, because maybe Rich was the one who should be sitting there, because maybe Rich was the one who deserved to have rumors made about him and Jake being a couple, because maybe Rich was a little bit jealous.

Rich silently turned away from staring at the table and stopped imagining impossible things.

The next second he was jerked quickly from his lunch and out of the lunchroom.

“Woah, hey!” he yelled, as he was shoved into the area under the staircase to the second floor. When he turned he saw Nicole Baker, one of the most popular seniors. What in the world was she doing? She wasn’t going to hit him, was she?

God, he was so pathetic.

“Shut up, loser.” she snapped. “I can’t let anyone know we’re back here.”

“Why are you—”

“I have a proposition for you.”

“A wha— why are you talking to me?”

“Yeah, you’re probably curious why I’m approaching such a loser.”

“I wath more wondering why you pulled me away my lunch, but thure, whatever.”

Nicole slammed her hand against the wall, successfully getting Rich to back into it. “Don’t be a smart-ass. I’m trying to help you.”

Rich blinked. “Okay, well now I am curiouth. You’ve never tho much ath given any frethman the time of day, why are you trying to ‘help’ me?”

Nicole raised an eyebrow. “You ever heard of a Squip?”

Rich stared at her. “No.” he said eventually. “Wait, did you say Thquip or thquid?”

“Squip, dumbass.” she poked him hard in the chest. “With a ‘p.’ It’s a supercomputer.”

“Uh… what?”

“S.Q.U.I.P. stands for Super Quantum Unit Intel Processor. It’s a quantum computer from Japan packaged in a grey oblong pill. The computer part implants itself in your brain and it tells you what to do. It helps you be cool, and it helps you rise in the social statuses. You go to the back of the Payless at the mall give the guy $400. He’ll give you one.”

Rich had been smiling and nodding for the past minute. “Okay, okay, yeth. Look, I jutht remembered I have thomwhere to be, tho…”

“I’m serious. Think about it.” Nicole said as he was leaving. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to be trying to stop him. “Oh, and sweetie?”

Rich stopped, because it was the safer option, and turned.

“That ‘lithp’ is adorable.”

Rich’s hand covered his mouth as his face went bright red. Nicole walked past him. “Think about it, okay?” she said, giving him a condescending pat on the shoulder before walking back into the lunchroom.

…

“That’s weird.”

“Thank you, Captain Obviouth.” Rich bit his tongue uncomfortably, as if that could get rid of his lisp— he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it since that afternoon.

“You should, like, call the police. It sounds like that girl needs mental help, or something.” Matt said.

“I’m not gonna call the polithe. If I did, I’d get my ath handed to me by thome angry friend of herth.” Rich spun his remote around and barely avoided the giant fireball in the middle of Bowser’s Castle (yes, he was playing Mario Kart, sue him). “Bethideth… what if thhe wathn’t lying?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well… it thounds kind of amazing, doethen’t it? Thomeone in your head telling you what to do? You’d never have to dethide for yourthelf. You’d jutht know.” It certainly sounded like it would make his life easier. Maybe it would give him a chance with Jake Dillinger.

All of a sudden, Matt paused the game, and Rich glanced over in surprise.

“Rich… dude, no.”

“Huh?”

“Why would you want someone telling you what to do all the time? That sounds… that sounds _awful.” ___

____

____

“What are you talking about?”

“Rich, you’re great just the way you are. You don’t need something telling you what to do all the time and changing things about you. You don’t need to change.”

“The thocial hierarchy doethn’t theem to think tho.” Rich pointed out, crossing his arms.

“Rich, seriously. Don’t worry about it. Someday you’re gonna look back and high school isn’t gonna matter anymore. Who cares what other people think?”

_“I _care, Matt! I get how you don’t, you leave next year! Then you’ll go to college and get away from Dad and probably get hoardth of friendth and a girlfriend and you won’t have to look back! I have another three yearth in thith hellhole and I have thith thupid fucking lithp and—”__

____

____

Matt stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Rich.” he said. “First of all, just because I’m leaving for college next year doesn’t mean I’m abandoning you. I will _never _do that. Second, your lisp is not stupid. And third—” he cut off Rich’s protesting about the lisp— “the last three years of high school don’t have to be horrible if you make some friends. Look for some like-minded people.”__

____

____

“Like-minded people?”

“You cannot be the only person at your school who likes the things you like. Rich, I would be astounded if you couldn’t at least find another person who likes video games.”

“I don’t know…” Rich muttered.

“Tell you what. You talk to someone during lunch tomorrow, you initiate conversation, and I’ll give you 50 bucks.”

“What— are you trying to _bribe _me into making friendth?”__

____

____

“Since all other methods have come to fail.” Matt held out his hands.

Rich hesitated… and then shook his hand.

Matt was leaving soon anyway, he had to learn how to stand on his own two legs. Some friends would be a good place to start.

…

The next morning, Rich rolled out of bed far too late. Matt came to his door holding a banana and a water bottle full of coffee as Rich was trying to get dressed as quietly as possible so as not to wake up their father.

He ended up grabbing his favorite sweater and a pair of jeans and skipping brushing his teeth in order to not have deal with the banana tasting like toothpaste.

Both Matt and him rode the bus to school. Their father didn’t like it when they took his car, despite the fact that he hardly ever used it himself.

Matt waved goodbye (with a reminder about their $50 bet) as he disappeared off to his first class, and that was pretty much the last time Rich would see him until that afternoon. Their schedules, as a senior and a freshman, did not really cross.

Rich went to his locker to get his things for English, and by the time he got to the class he could already tell it was going to be a long day. There was a sub at the front of the room, and they must have been having a worse day than Rich, because he could practically feel the disgust from having to be there rolling off of him. Most likely he was about to take all of his anger out on the students in front of him.

And… he actually turned out to be wrong. The sub was probably pissed at something, but all he did during the class was hand out a couple worksheets that they were supposed to use to analyze the chapters they’d just read and spend the entire time brooding at his desk.

Rich actually loved English, and he did a little bit of writing of his own— short stories and poems that he would ever show anyone else, of course. Even Matt hadn’t actually seen any. But right now they were reading ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ and Rich was enjoying analyzing the heck out of it. They’d finished it last week, and Rich had cried at the ending— and he would take _that _to his _grave. _____

_____ _

_____ _

The bell rang, and Rich moved from his favorite class to his 2nd favorite—P.E. And it absolutely was not his 2nd favorite because he got to see Jake Dillinger get all hot and sweaty. Nope, that absolutely was not the reason at all.

By the time he got out of P.E., Rich was already hungry, but he still had to sit through Algebra and Chemistry.

Needless to say, by lunchtime Rich was starving. He didn’t even remember the bet he’d made with Matt until he spotted him walking out of the lunchroom as he was going in. Matt raised his eyebrows expectantly, Rich realized what he was expecting, and just like that, Rich’s appetite was gone.

He got his tray of barely-food and stopped walking at the end of the line. Some kid grumbled in annoyance and swerved around him, and Rich moved to the side before returning his gaze to the lunchroom.

Like-minded people. Okay.

Eventually his gaze was drawn to two people sitting in the back of the room at a table by themselves. One was wearing a striped shirt and the other a bright red hoodie. Rich remembered seeing them around before. He thought they were in his class. They mainly caught his eye because they were playing with what looked like a multiplayer DS game. They both seemed pretty into it.

Well, they were two other people who liked video games.

Rich started to make his way over to them, but just as he was about halfway there, someone slammed into him from the opposite side, and that sent him to the floor.

“Hey!” Rich called on instinct. He turned to glare at them and— oh no.

“Sorry, didn’t see you there.” Dustin Kropp said.

“Yeah man, you’re kinda hard to notice.” Jake said, as they both moved casually around Rich and towards their table.

Something in Rich’s chest was stabbing him. Was this what a breaking heart felt like?

The people around Rich were staring, but the people he had been heading towards at the back table hadn’t even looked up. Right. Because he was hard to notice. After a couple seconds everyone went back to their lunch. They probably wouldn’t even remember this moment by next period. Jake certainly wouldn’t. Because he was just another invisible loser who was _hard to notice. ___

____

____

Rich jumped up and ran out of the room before he had a full-on breakdown in the middle of the cafeteria.

He found himself in the same stairway from yesterday, the place he had talked to Nicole Baker. And son of a gun, there she was again.

She turned around when she heard Rich’s footsteps and raised her eyebrows when she saw who it was. “Well?”

Rich would never be noticed like this. He would float like a ghost through high school and slip through the cracks of college, probably ending up in a job in a cubicle where he would spend his days longing for something more before retiring at 70 and dying alone in his sleep— if he even made it that long before doing the job himself.

But Nicole said that didn’t have to be his future. She said he could be someone cool, someone who had a chance with people like Jake Dillinger, someone people noticed. Someone who would never be hard to notice again.

Who was to say he didn’t deserve to have everything about him changed if everything about him was this awful?

Rich stepped further into the stairway.

“How much did you thay they cotht?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With his new attitude, dyed hair, and Squip, Rich is... well, he’s feeling better and out this year than the last one, so that’s something.

Five Months Later

Sophomore year was going to be very different from the year prior.  At least, that’s what Rich was hoping for. He felt ready, with his new outfits and new hair and new attitude and not-so-new-anymore Squip.

He took a deep breath.

**Remember, walk with confidence,** his Squip reminded.

So he did.  He puffed out his chest and raised his head, making sure to take up as much space as he could.

As he started walking down the hallway, the strangest thing happened— people turned to look at him.  Some people started whispering to each other. Rich caught “Who’s that?” and “Is he new?” and one curious glance from Jenna Rolan herself— that had to be a good thing, right?

**It is indeed likely that is a good sign.**  The Squip paused.   **Wink at her.**

He did, along with a smirk.

Jenna’s eyes widened and she quickly turned back to her phone, typing something else.

_ Is that a good sign? _ Rich thought at the Squip.

**Most likely.**

Rich didn’t bother finding his locker—  **It is a bad idea to bring anything to put away or carry on the first day of school.  It is unlikely such things will even be necessary.** — and went to his first class, which just so happened to be geometry, first thing in the morning, which was awesome.

**Don’t worry about your grades this year, Richard.  I will take care of them.**

_ Really? _ Rich asked in surprise.   _ Sweet. _

He did, however, tune in automatically when he got to English.  The teacher at the front of the room was going over the material they would be reading, and was currently talking about  _ Hamlet, _ which they would read, and then have the chance to go see performed midway through the year.

**Groan.**

_ What, why? _

**Act like you think this boring.**

_ But I like Shakespeare. _

Rich felt a small shock at the base of his spine.  He groaned aloud, and every gaze in the classroom turned to him.

“Excuse me, Mr…” the teacher said, raising her eyebrows.

“Rich.” he supplied.

**I’m wondering why we care about some dead guys’ plays.**

“And I’m just wondering why we care about some dead guys’ plays.”

“Young man, I will not have that kind of attitude in my class.  I’ll have you know you owe a lot to Shakespeare. He personally created over 1,700 words for the English language.”

**Well, sure, but…**

“Well, sure, but it’s not like he’s come up with any new words lately.”

Someone to the right of Rich gave a short laugh, which was followed by many others in the room.  When Rich glanced to his right he could see why because  _ holy shit Jake Dillinger was sitting next to him how had he not noticed until now— _

“Everyone, please!” the poor teacher was trying to get the room back under control.  Eventually everyone quieted down, but by that point what was done had been done, and everyone in the class spent the rest of the time staring at Rich.

…

“Hey!”

**Stop.**

Rich turned to see Jake walking up to him just outside the English classroom. _  Okay, stay calm Goranski.  This is only everything you’ve ever wanted.  To be— _

**To be** **_friends_ ** **with Jake Dillinger, right?**

_ Uh… yeah. _

“Rich?” Jake questioned, and Rich nodded.

“You’re new here, right?”

**Yes.**

“Yeah.”

“Cool.  I’m Jake.”  Jake held out his hand, and Rich shook it, a warm tingle running through his own hand as he did, followed by a shock from the Squip— though Rich wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong this time.

“So, some friends and I were gonna go to Pinkberry this afternoon— the frozen yogurt place?  It’s, uh, Brooke’s favorite place to eat, and it’s her turn to pick. Do you wanna come?”

Rich’s eyes widened.  “Really?”

Another shock.   **Be chill, Richard.**

“I mean, yeah.  I don’t really know this place that well yet, so it’d be helpful to find some good places to eat at.  You have the address?” Rich asked, though he already knew.

“Oh, here.”  Jake walked inside and grabbed a sticky note from the teacher’s desk and scribbled something down.  He handed it to Rich. It was a phone number. “One of my friends is a junior. He has a car. Text me your address and we’ll pick you up.”

“S-sure, okay.”

Shock for stuttering.

“Cool, see you then.” Jake waved and walked off.

The Squip sighed.   **Rich, if you are going to do what I think you’re going to do, you're going to need an emptier place.  Follow my directions.**

Rich did, and found himself in the boiler room.

Right before he freaked out in the middle of the boiler room.

“Jake Dillinger just asked me to hang out with him!” Rich screamed, before collapsing back against a wall.  “I’m ‘hanging out’ with  _ Jake Dillinger! _  He just gave me his phone number!   _ This is the greatest day of my life!” _

The Squip couldn’t help but chuckle.

…

Rich heard a honk when he was getting ready to leave with the suggested outfit the Squip pointed out— a tank top and shorts.  When he heard the honk, Rich jumped and scrambled out to the living room, where thankfully his dad was still passed out on the chair in front of the TV.  Rich ran outside before they could honk again and give him another chance to wake up and snuck out the front door, grabbing the house key on the way out.

He slowed and walked down the driveway at the Squip’s command, where a car was waiting at the curb.  Both Jake and Dustin were sitting in the retractable 3rd row and Chloe was in the middle along with Brooke.  Two juniors whose names Rich didn’t know were in the front seat. Rich climbed into the middle where he sat next to Brooke, who scooted over.  She waved at him and smiled. “Hi. You’re Rich, right? I’m Brooke.” she held out her hand.

**Yeah, I know.  A lot of guys talk about you.**

“Yeah, I know.” Rich said with a shrug as he shook her hand.  “A lot of guys talk about you.” That was true, actually. No one would dare make a move, because Brooke had a boyfriend, but that didn't mean guys didn’t talk about her.

Brooke’s eyes widened happily.  “Really?”

He heard a groan from Chloe.  “Yes, Brooke, we all already knew that guys love you.” she said, rolling her eyes.

But apparently the Squip’s comment had been the right thing to say, because Brooke looked lit up for the rest of the ride there.

“I’m Abigail, and this is Steven.” said Abigail from the front seat, gesturing to the other junior, who was driving.

“I’m Chloe.” Chloe called from across the seat.

“Dustin.” Dustin said.  Rich nodded at each of them as they introduced themselves and tried to pretend like he needed that information.

Jake and Dustin spent most of the drive talking about which extra curricular Jake was planning to do this year.  He always did as many as possible, while Rich had done exactly none.

**Which is going to change this year.**

Right.  The Squip, due to not wanting to hover in front of someone who might talk to him, was currently floating above everyone’s heads.  Which was a little amusing, but it wasn’t like Rich could laugh about it.

“Hey, Rich.” Jake called from the backseat, and Rich turned around.  “You planning on joining any clubs this year?”

Rich shrugged, and gave the answer prompted by the Squip.  “I don’t know. Maybe. Which ones do you think are fun?”

Jake shrugged.  “Sports are some of my favorites.  I’m pretty good at volleyball and swimming.  And of course student council is great, but I don’t have much of a chance for president as a sophomore.”

**Says who?**

“Says who?  I bet we could find a way to get people to vote for you.”

Jake smiled at him.  “Wow, thanks Rich.”

“Yeah, thanks Rich.” piped up one of the juniors from the front seat.  “Taking spots away from the upperclassmen.”

“That’s what I’m here for.” Rich replies with a smirk.

**What clubs are you in Dustin?  Say it with a smug tone.**

“What uh, what clubs are you in Dustin?”

“Huh?  Oh, none.”

“Really?  So what do you do for fun, homework?”

Chloe snickered behind her hand, and Brooke gave a short laugh before covering her mouth.  Even Jake seemed to be trying to hide a smile. “There  _ are _ days when you call me out of boredom, dude,” he pointed out.

“Wha— I just—”

“We’re here.” called Steven.

When he pulled into a spot everyone emptied out of the car, pulling the second seat forward so Jake and Dustin could get out.

_ That was kinda rude. _ Rich thought at his Squip.

**That’s irrelevant.**

_ Dustin seemed bothered by it. _

**And yet everyone else laughed.  Richard, there are limited spots in the popularity group of this school.  If you want to truly establish yourself as a part of it, you’ll have to kick someone else out.  And you have already shown previous dislike of Dustin Kropp.**

_ Why do I have to kick someone out? _

**We can’t have the lunch table getting too crowded.**

_ Do I actually have to kick someone out or are you just trying to prove something? _

**That’s irrelevant.**

…

A couple weeks later Dustin stopped sitting at the popular table.  It wasn’t even announced by anyone— he just stopped showing up. That should have made Rich happier than it did.

But what was weirder was that Dustin didn’t seem all that bothered— he didn’t even appear mad at Rich when they passed each other in the hallways, he just gave Rich a pleasant nod and continued on his way.  Rich never nodded back.

Today he was walking down the hallway with his usual false confidence when the Squip spoke up suddenly.

**See that kid?**

_ Huh? _

**The one over there in the cardigan.**

Rich saw who he was talking about.  He recognized him too. That was one of the kids he’d been trying to approach last year in the cafeteria.

**Shove him into his locker as you pass him.**

_ Wait, what?  Why? _

The tell-tale shock at the base of his spine meant that the Squip was not going to answer, but it had to have a good reason, right?

Rich walked up towards the kid, but couldn’t quite reach his shoulders to shove him inside his locker.  So rather instead, Rich used his elbow. “Out of my way, tall-ass!” he snapped.

The kid hit his head on the edge of his locker and cried out before falling backwards.  Rich dove out of the way and the kid caught himself on the edge of his locker. “Ow!” he exclaimed about five seconds after he’d stopped moving.  “Wha— What was that for?”

**You were in my way.**

“You were in my way.” Rich spat, not enjoying this one bit.  He turned to walk away, and the kid let him go without much argument.

**Jeremy Heere.** the Squip supplied.   **You’ll be seeing a lot more of him.**

The thought made Rich a little queasy.   _ Do I have to? _

**You sound like you’re whining, Richard.  Don’t ask me why, remember?**

Rich said nothing— he thought nothing towards his Squip, anyway.

**Jake is to your left.**

“Hey, Jakey D!” Rich called, a nickname that had popped up naturally over the past couple weeks.  “Did you get the spot on the volleyball team?”

…

Text from Matt:  _ Hey, Richie.  I’m just letting you know I’m still here if you need me.  I hope you’re doing okay. _

Rich deleted the text.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s Halloween! No, not that one. The year before.

Rich was dating someone named Jessica now, so that was… alright, he supposed.  She was very sweet, and definitely hot, but she wasn’t really Rich’s type. The Squip said it would be harder to rise in popularity as a single person, so it was necessary to get a girlfriend as soon as possible.

Rich just hoped breaking Jessica’s heart didn’t become necessary.

Although everyone was much more focused on a different, currently real heartbreak right now, because Brooke had recently discovered her boyfriend of eight months had been cheating on her.  Rich couldn’t help but feel bad for her, especially after his Squip revealed that he had been cheating on her with Chloe.

_Should I tell Brooke?_

**You will do no such thing.** the Squip said firmly.   **Don’t rock the boat, Richard.**

_But if Chloe gets away with it she’ll probably do it again—_

**Who cares?**

_Um, Brooke?_

That got him a particularly bad shock.

_Alright, alright!  Geez._

Rich’s favorite part of the day was now lunch.  Sure, right now it sucked more than usual due to Brooke’s breakup, but it didn’t change the fact that his daydreams from freshman year were basically coming true on a daily basis.  Chloe with her sarcastic comments, Brooke with her sweet compliments, Jenna with her constant questions and vigilance, and then there was Jake— who was very quickly becoming Rich’s best friend.  He wasn’t very well leaning into him or holding his hand, but he was there, right next to him.

Though the Squip usually shocked him if he focused on that for too long.

“Alright.  Next Friday is Halloween, and you all know what that means,” Jake said that day.

“Not all of us,” Jenna pointed out, gesturing at Rich.

Jake glanced over.  “Right, man, sorry. I keep forgetting this is your first year here.”

Honestly, Rich didn’t mind that much.  That meant they already knew each other pretty well.

“Every Halloween since I was like, 13, I’ve thrown a massive party at my house.  Costumes are required, naturally. There will be plenty of alcohol. And this year—” Jake pointed across the table.  “Brooke gets to plan the whole thing.”

“What?  Me?” Brooke asked in surprise.

“Yep.” Jake said.  “You don’t have to do it right now, but don’t make it lame, and it has to be decently scary.”

He may have been trying to cover it up with sarcastic comments and “rules” and talk of alcohol, but everyone knew what Jake was doing.  Jake had a natural tendency to be a massive sweetheart. He may have been pretty much blind to other people most of the time, but if he knew something was wrong, he would do everything in his power to fix it.  It was one of Rich’s favorite qualities about him. And since in this case what he could do was cheer Brooke up by letting her plan the party, that was what he would do.

A mild shock from the Squip jolted Rich from his appreciative thoughts.

Jessica approached the table at that moment, and sat down on Rich’s right side, leaning against him.  Rich put an arm around her shoulders, because that was what he was supposed to do, but what he really wanted was for her to eat her food and let him eat his without her feeling the need to touch him all the time.

He thought that Jessica knew, at least partially, that Rich didn’t really like her.  He hated the sad looks she would shoot him, because she obviously liked him a lot. Rich couldn’t begin to imagine why, he just wished he didn’t have to lead her on like this.  He wished he could date someone he actually liked.

**You need a girlfriend.  Besides, you don’t like anyone right now.**

Rich wasn’t entirely sure that was true.  But his Squip didn’t let him think about that long enough to make any definitive decision.

“What are we talking about?” Jessica asked.

“My Halloween party.” Jake supplied.

“Oh!  Babe, we’re wearing couple costumes, right?”

It took a shock from his Squip for Rich to realize she was talking to him.

**Of course.**

“Of course.”

Of course.

Jessica’s face lit up as she started listing out all the different options she’d already come up with, which made it almost worth it.  They ended up going with Sally and Jack from The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Chloe made a comment that the idea was cliché.

Last year Rich and Matt had gone as Mario and Luigi.  Rich hadn’t played Mario anything in a long time. Eventually Matt had taken the Wii with him to college.  That was for the best. Besides, almost all video games qualified as lame, and were for losers like Jeremy Heere and his headphones buddy.  (And of course Trick-or-Treating was out the window. Not like he cared. He was too old anyway.)

“Can there be candy?” Brooke asked, and Rich refocused on the current conversation.

“Brooke, it’s Halloween.” Jake said.

“Yeah, who ever heard of Halloween having anything to do with candy?” Jenna said with a roll of her eyes.

“Yes.” Jake clarified.  “I’m saying yes, pick out some candy.”

Brooke squealed happily and pulled out her phone that she started making plans in, while Jake pulled out his phone and started his own plan of who was invited.  It probably would have been more efficient to make a list of who _wasn’t_ invited.  This would have been the first year that list didn’t include Rich.

Rich knew he should have felt overjoyed about that, and he did, honestly!  He was happy to be going! He just wished… well, he wished he could spend Halloween with Matt.  Maybe he wished he could have planned a couples costume with someone else.

Cue the shock.

…

Halloween would always be Rich’s favorite holiday.  He didn’t think there was much in the world that could change that.  Between the costumes and the candy and the feeling of creepiness that was actually kind of awesome, he loved everything about it.  He wasn’t sure what exactly Jake Dillinger’s party would add to the pre-established Halloween in his mind, but he was willing to find out.

Rich snuck out of the house after his dad was already asleep for the night (at about 4 in the afternoon), and met up with Abigail outside, who was giving him a ride.  He made it to Jake’s house, which was really more like a mansion, and got inside to help with setup, along with everyone else who had gone to Pinkberry the first day— bar Dustin.  He put his Jack costume on the back of a couch before running to help Brooke with some purposefully torn streamers.

They finished setting everything up around 7:30, and the party looked surprisingly good.  There was the natural assumptions of lots of black and orange and jack-o-lanterns, but Brooke had also somehow managed to get a list of every single costume being worn and plan various parts of each room around the costumes— even ones she didn’t know about and had to research.

“Are you, like, gonna be a wedding planner or something?” Rich asked, looking around in amazement.

“I actually am considering that.” Brooke said happily.

**It doesn’t really seem like a high school party.** the Squip said.

_So?_

**No, say it.**

_What?  No way, Brooke worked so hard.  It looks really cool._

**Richard.**  It was accompanied with a shock.

“It— just doesn’t really look like a high school party.” Rich got out.

Brooke’s face fell, and Rich had to bite his tongue to stop himself from immediately taking the words back.

“Hey, who cares?” Jake cut in, walking in from the other room.  “Stop being such a downer Rich, I think it looks awesome.”

Brooke smiled again.

**Okay, now apologize.**

“Okay, I’m sorry.” Rich said, trying to sound as natural as he could.  “It’s just pretty different from the parties I’m used to.”

“Well you’ve clearly never been to any good parties.” Brooke said, having gained her confidence back.

“Alright, guests should be arriving in half an hour, so let’s pig out on the candy before they get here.” Jake said with a smirk.

Brooke laughed and ran into the other room as Jake followed.  Rich stayed behind for the moment.

“What was that?” he snapped, glaring at where his Squip was standing in the corner.

**What do you mean?** they replied.

“So when Jake thinks the party looks cool I have to agree with him, but if _I_ think the party looks cool I have to keep my mouth shut?!”

The Squip shrugged.   **I was simply reacting to the situation.**

“I don’t—”

“Rich!” Jake called from the other room.  “You coming?”

Rich glanced into the living room where candy was being eaten.  He glared back at the Squip. “We’re not done with this conversation.”  He turned and walked into the living room to join the others.

…

Rich didn’t love parties.  Well, he didn’t hate them, but he didn't love them either.

When the first people started to show up, he had fun, but he was quickly drained of his energy through all of the social interaction.  After twenty minutes, the only thing he wanted to do was go find a room to hide in; but according to the Squip, that wasn’t an option.

He also wasn’t allowed to drink any alcohol unless the Squip explicitly gave him permission.  Alcohol temporarily caused them to shut down.

One of the benefits (was it a benefit?  Rich wasn’t sure) of being so exhausted was the Squip said that there wouldn’t be any sex that night, with Jessica or otherwise (Otherwise?  What do you mean otherwise? I may not like Jessica, but I don’t want to cheat on her). It would happen eventually, he assured. Just when Rich was more prepared.

That final comment made Rich’s face go bright red, enough that someone asked if he was already drunk.

Most of the party flew by in a blur.  Jessica was barley around all night, mostly deciding to spend time partying with other people.  Rich barely saw her at all. Around 1AM the last guests left, and when Jake offered for everyone who had helped set up to spend the night in lieu of driving home, Rich collapsed on a couch in the living room and didn’t wake up until noon.

Chloe had stayed even though she hadn’t helped set up, but no one had kicked her out, which was the reason Rich woke up to Chloe’s snoring.  Steven, Abigail, Chloe, and Brooke were all still asleep. Jenna, despite having helped with setup, had gone home the night before.

Rich sat up and stretched his arms over his head, before wandering into the kitchen to see what was being made for breakfast.  He found Jake at the kitchen table drinking coffee— he had been expecting some tomato juice. Maybe Jake just had a really high tolerance.  Honestly, Rich wouldn’t be surprised.

“G’morning,” Rich mumbled.  “Afternoon. Whatever. Thanks for letting me spend the night.”

“No problem.” Jake replied.

Rich picked up the coffee pot and one of the five mugs already set out and poured himself a cup.  “Do you need people to stay for cleanup or are your parents helping with that?” he asked.

It took Rich a minute to realize Jake had gotten very quiet very quickly.  Rich glanced up to see Jake staring down at his coffee mug.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

“My parents aren’t here.  Ever, really.” Jake said.

“Oh.”

His tone made it clear that it was something he didn’t like to talk about, but…

**Richard, I would strongly advise against—**

_Yeah, yeah.  Shut up, okay?_

“My mom’s dead.”  Rich said, and Jake glanced up.  “And my dad is passed out in front of the TV most of the time.  He drinks a lot.”

And when he wasn’t sleeping or drinking he was usually using Rich as a punching bag, but he wasn’t going to share that part.

Jake chuckled dryly.  “I guess shitty parents is the cost of being popular, huh?”

“You don't have to be popular to have shitty parents,” Rich said softly.

Jake sighed.  “Yeah, I know.  And it's not like every popular kid does… sorry, I tend to joke about it a lot.”

“Nah, it’s okay.  I get it.” Rich took a sip of coffee.  “I’ll stay to help clean up.”

“Thanks, man.”

…

Rich’s dad was still asleep when Abigail dropped him off at home.  He didn’t much know or care if he’d woken up at all while Rich was gone.

As soon as he got to his room however, the Squip had some things to say.

**Richard.  I think we can both agree this experience could have gone better.**

Rich sat on his bed.   _Yeah, we can.  Would it be okay if you let me have my own opinions every now and again?_

**Richard, you took me because you recognize that your opinions are not getting you anywhere.**

_Well, yeah, but…  Look, we’ve achieved my goal.  Do you think you could let up a bit?_

**No.**

_Why not?_

**Because I know better.  Richard, you are far too much of a loser to have popularity and keep it without my help.**

_Jake likes me._

**Oh?  Did he like you last year?  If I’m accessing your memories correctly, I believe he called you ‘hard to notice.’**

_I—_

**Richard, you cannot do this without me.  Do you want to remain Jake Dillinger’s best friend?**

Just his best friend?  Was that as close as they could get?

Shock from the Squip.

**Do you want to remain his best friend?**

_I— yes._

**Then you have to listen and** **_do as I say._ ** **Understand?**

_Yes._  Rich didn’t know you could whisper in your head.

_“Rich!”_ came his Father’s voice from outside his room.  Rich flinched. “Where are you? You better be in there now!  I know you weren’t here last night!”

Well, this was going to be fun.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, everyone knew their relationship would end this way.

Adding on to the messy breakup list was Jake and Chloe.  It might have actually been a little worse than Brooke’s breakup, because no one was going to dare kick Jake or Chloe out of the table.  Therefore, everyone sat at lunch in awkward silence the day after it happened.

_You gonna help me out here?_

**There are too many variables.  Anything you say can be taken too many ways.  Silence is neutral.**

_So basically… you’ve got nothing._

The Squip was silent, proving Rich’s point.  Leaving them doomed to sit in awkward silence until some fool spoke up.

And according to the Squip, Rich was not going to be that fool.

Apparently, it was going to be Brooke, who cleared her throat.  “So… are we still going to eat tonight? Whose turn is it to pick the location?”

“I think it’s Rich’s.  Have you picked a place yet?” Jessica asked, and honestly, Rich thought that was pretty smart of her, because letting Jake or Chloe pick probably wasn’t a good plan.

“I haven’t.” Rich said.  “I was kind of thinking…”

**Give a generic response.  You’re still not supposed to know this area very well yet so don’t give a unique location.**

“…Applebees?”

**Good enough.**

“Yeah, I’d be okay with that.” Brooke said with a shrug.  “You good Chlo?”

“I suppose.” Chloe replied icily.

Jake looked like he didn’t want to offend Chloe with whatever he might say, so he just gave an uneasy nod.

Jessica gave an additional affirmation, and then Jake spoke up for the first time all lunch, just saying he would text Steven the location and they’d be there to pick them all up around the usual times.

When Chloe and Jake had started dating late last year, everyone had known it would eventually end this way— not that anyone would dare say that to their faces, especially not now.  And especially not Rich, both because Jake was his best friend and because his Squip wouldn't let him.

But Rich was pretty sure both Jake and Chloe could see knowing looks exchanged by people in the hallway, though they said nothing about it.

Thankfully, the bell rang and the students rose en mass to leave the cafeteria.

Rich went the rest of the day on autopilot, mostly because his mind was all over the place.  When he got home there was another text from Matt on his phone, just him checking in again as he did every couple weeks or so.  Rich deleted this text too before tossing his phone onto his bed. He walked over and sat down at his desk, placing his head in his arms.  If nothing else, he appreciated the confirmation that Matt was still alive.

**What is it?**

“I don’t know.” Rich mumbled the response aloud.  “Just an off day I guess.”

But it didn’t feel like a regular off day.  It felt… hopeful? Rich couldn’t for the life of him figure out why.  His best friend had just broken up with his girlfriend, for crying out loud!

**Well, off days are fine as long as you don’t let anyone know.** the Squip said.

Rich sighed, and walked over to his bed to take a nap.  His Squip woke him up 15 minutes later— **5 to 20 minute naps are the best time period for boosting energy and awareness** — and helped him with his homework.

Homework was Rich’s favorite time of day, though he would be too embarrassed to admit that even if his Squip would let him.  Honestly, a part of him would probably always be nerdy— hey, if your favorite part of the day as one of the most popular people at school was the assigned reading for English, it was time to admit you were a nerd.

**Except you aren’t a nerd.  Not anymore.**

Sure, yeah.  Rich tried not to disagree with the Squip.  He knew they had his best interests at heart.  Besides, nerds weren’t cool.

Rich still kind of felt like one, though.  It made him feel guilty about teasing Dustin Kropp, because while it may not have been true for Dustin, homework was actually something Rich found fun.

**Who cares about Dustin Kropp?  He’s a loser now.**

_Only cause we turned him into one._

**He would have most likely gotten there on his own anyway.  What is it with the constant questioning Richard? I have to fight tooth and nail to get you to do what I say.  You understand I can only truly help you if you listen and obey me.**

_I know._

**Good.  Everyone will be here soon, I’d go outside so Steven doesn’t honk again and possibly wake up your father.**

Rich grabbed his jacket and went outside— winter coats were rarely cool, which unfortunately lead to Rich _rarely_ not having a cold.

Whatever, the Squip could cover for him anyway, so no one would ever know he had a cold.

The car pulled up, Rich slid into the middle seat next to Jessica, and they were off to Applebees.

…

“To be or not to be: that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles…”

Rich started at the stage and would have been mouthing the lines along with Hamlet if his Squip hadn’t been holding his mouth shut.

“…And by opposing end them.  To die, to sleep— No more— and by a sleep to say we end the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to!”

The people behind Rich were whispering to each other, and he wished the could turn around and tell them to shut up.

“‘It’s a consummation devoutly to be wished.  To die, to sleep— to sleep— perchance to dream: ay , there’s the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause.”

“Wow.  You’re, uh, you’re really into this, aren’t you?”

It took Rich a second to realize that was Jessica talking to him from the seat to his right.  He tore his gaze away from the play and glanced at her. “What?”

“The play.  You’re really into it.”

“Oh, um, I mean—”

**I guess I’m amazed someone could look that stupid.**

“I guess I’m amazed someone could look that stupid.” Rich said.  He had to stop himself from biting his tongue.

From the look on her face, Rich didn’t think Jessica believed him.  “Okay, Rich.” she said quietly, and turned back to the play herself.  She looked almost sad, but Rich couldn’t begin to name the reason why.

“…Who would fardels bear,” Rich tuned back in, “to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of?”

…

Rich was allowed to drink alcohol at Jake’s party that night, mostly because he was supposed to have sex and he really did _not_ want to Squip there for that.  So when the Squip offered alcohol as an easy solution, Rich took it.

He was sort of regretting that decision now, because he had no idea how to respond to what Jessica had just said.

“You’re breaking up with me… because of Hamlet?”

They were both standing on one of the many balconies in Jake’s house, just the two of them.

“Rich…” Jessica said sadly.  “You should have seen your face.  I’ve almost never seen you look that happy.  I can really only name two situations. Shakespeare, apparently, and… when you look at Jake.”

Alarm bells went off in Rich’s head, because _holy fuck—_

“Now I’m not going to insinuate, or force you to admit anything, because you may not be ready for that.” Jessica said quickly, putting her hands up.  “But I also know you’ve never once looked at me that way. I really like you, Rich. And I think you deserve to be happy. And I don’t think you’ll ever be happy with me.”

Rich found himself unable to say anything.  Jessica smiled sadly at him, then walked forward and kissed his cheek.

“Good luck, Rich.” she said when she backed away.  “You can say you broke up with me, by the way. You have a reputation to uphold.  I get that, I won’t mind.”

She turned around and walked back inside the house, towards the party.  Rich turned to look out at the backyard. He was more relieved than he would have liked to admit, and also a little ashamed.  He’d known from the start he didn’t like Jessica, so why had he dated her anyway?

The Squip began to form next to him.

Oh yeah.  That was why.  Before he could stop himself, Rich took another drink from his solo cup of beer.  He wanted his head to himself a little longer.

The next minute Jake walked out onto the balcony.  “Hey, Rich.” he walked up next to him and followed Rich’s gaze up.  “Yeah, you can see a lot of stars from this house.”

“That’s Cetus,” Rich blurted before he could stop himself, pointing up at the constellation.  “See it?”

Jake squinted up at the sky.  “Uh… no.” There was an awkward pause.  “Oh, wait, yes! That one there?”

“Yeah.  Cetus is a sea monster.”

“Sweet.” Jake short Rich a glance.  “I didn’t know you knew this stuff.”

“Mom loved constellations.  She taught Matt and me all of them.”

“Is Matt your brother?”

“Yeah.  He left for college a few months ago.  I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“Sorry, Rich.  That sucks.”

“What are you doing out here?” Rich asked, mostly to change the subject.  “Don’t you usually spend the whole time in the party?”

“I saw Chloe making out with a guy and needed to clear my head.  Why are you out here?”

“I broke up with Jessica.” Rich said, because one part of this conversation had to go in a way the Squip would approve of.

“Oh.” There was another awkward pause.  “Well, guess we can be in the crummy breakup club together.”

“Yeah.” Rich muttered.  “Together.”

Jake leaned forward a little over the railing and looked back up at the sky.  “Tell me more constellations.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, that shit is cool!”

“Well, um,” Rich pointed.  “There’s Perseus, though you can probably see him better in December.  There’s Orion. You can see him pretty clearly, even though he’s sideways.”

“Is that the Big Dipper?” Jake asked, pointing.

“Um, no.  And by the way, that’s the cliché constellation for amateurs.”

“Aw, come on, Rich, indulge me.”

“Not when you point at a cluster of random stars and ask if it’s a constellation that is really only part of an actual, bigger constellation.”

Jake laughed.  “You’re pretty funny, you know that?”

In that moment, Rich was so glad it was dark outside and Rich couldn’t see his bright red face.  “I know,” he replied, because it was what the Squip would say, and they were quiet for a while looking at the stars.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, winter break seems like one of those things that would be more fun without a Squip.

“What do you mean you’re not gonna study?” Jake asked.

Rich shrugged.  “I never do. Watch, I’m gonna ace these finals.”

“That’s actually not possible.” Jenna said.  “You have to study at least a little bit.”

“Bet you fifty bucks I ace ‘em.”

“…Twenty.”

“Deal.”

They shook hands.

“But you only lowered the price ‘cause you knew you’re gonna lose.”

“I lowered the price because I don’t have fifty bucks I can spare.”

“Well if you’re so sure you’re gonna win, why does it matter?”

Jenna glared.  “You can’t ace a final without studying, genius.”

“I am a genius.  And that’s how I’m going to ace those finals.”

Jenna groaned and rolled her eyes, and the conversation moved on to other topics.

Rich had hated finals last year.  They had been stressful and full of buildup of other things in other parts of his life that made the whole thing worse.  But this year he had a Squip.

And suddenly finals were his favorite part of the year.  Because while everyone else was scrambling and studying their brains out and panicking over dates and study guides, Rich was off to the side sipping a glass of wine and laughing at the commoners.

Okay, not really.  But that’s what it felt like.

Unfortunately, It also gave him plenty of time to think about the holidays coming up, because last year he and Matt had been getting each other presents “secretly” (they went to the store together and hid the presents under their shirts) and taping a drawing of a tree up in Rich’s room and building snowmen outside because “What the hell, we’re still kids, right?”

But according to the Squip, none of that was cool.  He was most likely going to be spending winter break alone in his room trying not to bother his father.

What he wanted to do was spend the holidays with Jake.  Not because he had a crush. He definitely didn’t. More because if Jake’s parents weren’t ever around he probably spent Christmas alone.  But no matter how much Jake would probably appreciate it, the Squip would not approve of him offering. So that was that.

Every time he he even thought about offering there was a shock at the base of his spine.  The Squip was much less free with him ever since the… constellation incident. Alcohol had been outlawed entirely, and Rich didn’t get much opportunity for speaking freely unless it was simple boasting, like it was just now.

Rich supposed if there was anything good that had come out of that night it was that he now had a reprieve from dating, at least for a little while.  “Grieving period,” everyone else called it. “If you get a girlfriend again too soon it’ll make you look like an asshole,” the Squip called it.

Rich wasn’t sure he wanted to date anyone ever again based on how his experience with his first girlfriend had gone.  It wasn’t like there were any hard feelings between him and Jessica. Everyone else in his group of friends were too focused on Jake and Chloe to even comment on it, and Jessica’s friends were comforting her after “that bastard broke up with you.”  (Rich really hoped Jessica was only _pretending_ to be sad.)  But despite all that, he was still pretty shaken up, because her comment—

Another shock.  Yeah. The Squip wasn’t even letting _that_ conversation register.

Even so, the two weeks without homework were gonna be nice.  Rich just wished they could be less lonely. But Brooke and Chloe spent the holiday with their families (plus Chloe was outlawed as a candidate anyway due to being the ex-girlfriend of his best friend), Jenna wasn’t high enough on the totem pole to hang out with, and the Squip had already said no to spending Christmas with Jake.

As expected, Rich aced all his finals and Jenna, still in disbelief until she saw his grades online, gave him the twenty bucks.  The gloating was kind of fun, though at this point Rich was sick of thinking about Christmas break and wanted to already be back at school after New Years.

He still cheered when the final bell rang. The Squip didn’t even tell him to, it was high school policy.  When school lets out for a break or for summer vacation, you cheer. Or at least, that’s what everyone did at Middleborough.

Steven dropped him off and Rich waved to Jake, saying (to his disappointment) that he would see him after the break, and then went immediately to his room.

He heard from Jake later that night when, to his shock, he asked if Rich wanted to spend the break at his house, since he and his dad probably wouldn’t be doing much, right?

Of course.  Jake had not only thought of the same thing Rich had, he also asked because he was more concerned about Rich than himself.  That boy was amazing.

**Tell him no.**

_But—_ he’s _asking._ Rich protested.   _Doesn’t that make it okay?_

**It is not okay that you do not have anything else to do.  Tell him you have plans with a friend from your old school.**

Sighing, Rich did so.  Better to just do what the Squip said than do what they said after a series of shocks.

Jake’s response came a few minutes later.   _Oh.  Okay._

Rich wanted to bang his head on the wall.

…

His dad was having his ‘Christmas Eve Celebration,’ which involved kicking Rich out of the house for the night.  It was cold as fuck, and Rich wanted nothing more than to curl up under his blankets and go to sleep. Instead, he grabbed 10 bucks and bought a coffee and half a dozen donuts at the Dunkin’ Donuts near his house.

He sat at a table in the back and didn’t understand why the kid at the table over flinched away until he looked over to see Jeremy Heere.  Yeah, the guy who he beat up on a weekly basis.

Rich groaned, rolled his eyes, and turned away, eating another half of a donut in one bite.  After he swallowed it down rather painfully, Jeremy stammered out: “Y-you’re not gonna…”

**Richard.**

“It’s Christmas.” Rich snapped, probably to both the Squip and Jeremy.

Jeremy stared at him for a minute before turning back to his own two donuts.  Rich didn’t ask why he was there, and a second later he got his answer anyway, because Headphones Kid walked out of the bathroom and took the second donut.

Apparently Jeremy wasn’t having greatest night, because from what Rich picked up from the conversation, Headphones Kid was trying to cheer him up about something.

Rich would have been content to eat his donuts in peace if Headphones Kid hadn't noticed him and moved them both to another table.

It was fine.  That totally didn’t sting, or bring up bad memories.  Why should he care, they were losers, right? He had told them such more than once.  And Rich Goranski didn’t care what losers thought.

Rich downed the coffee quickly and moved on to another donut.  He bought one more coffee and put the leftover change back in his pocket.

He sat there eating his donuts long after Jeremy and Headphones Kid both left— until the Squip finally talked to him around 1 in the morning and the people at the counter had started giving him irritated looks.

**You can go home.  Your father will not wake up until at least noon and will assume that you got home tomorrow morning.**

Rich sighed, stood up and stretched, and walked out without looking back.

He got home at 1:30 and went straight to his room, pulled on his pajamas and crawled under the covers, hoping he wouldn’t wake up sick tomorrow but expecting he would.

And that was exactly what happened.

Luckily, since he had ‘plans with an old friend’ all break, he was allowed to lay in bed all day and recover.

His dad banged on his door around noon and yelled that he had better not hear him all day, but Rich was pretty sure that wouldn’t be a problem.

**I suggest eating something.**

_Like what?_

**There are crackers in the pantry, those would be a good start.**

Rich groaned, climbed from bed and walked into the kitchen as quietly as possible before grabbing the box of crackers and retreating to his room.

He alternated between eating crackers and napping for most of the morning, but he still wasn’t feeling much better by early afternoon.

_Are you sure I don’t need to go to a doctor?_

**You just have a slight fever brought on by a cold.  You should feel better tomorrow morning.**

_Then why do I feel like shit right now?_

**You would feel worse if you had a higher fever.**

_Maybe I should actually get a winter coat?  There has to be at least one that qualifies as cool enough to wear._

**We’ll go shopping when you feel better.**

His phone buzzed.

Text from Matt.

_Merry Christmas._

“Bah humbug.” Rich grumbled, and tossed his phone onto the pile of clothes by his closet.

He turned back around and shoved his face into his pillow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for all the angst. It will get better. Eventually.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rich has some valid musings over many different topics.

Well, Rich still didn’t have a winter coat, but by the time he went back to school he was allowed to wear the very thick sweatshirts they had ~~stolen~~ bought using nonexistent money from the mall.  No sweaters, which were what he preferred, but at least he didn’t have a cold all the time anymore.

Rich could honestly say he had never been more relieved that a break was over, and that was a little sad.

He walked into English and sat down next to Jake, and shot him a grin, which Jake returned.

At lunch the usual plans were made about what restaurant to go to later, and to the relief of everyone, a lot of the Jake-Chloe awkwardness had faded over break and the group felt at ease again.

In English that morning it had been revealed that they would be reading 1984, and the books had been handed out.  Rich had indifferently shoved it into his backpack to keep up appearances, but it was all he had been able to think about all morning.  He wanted to ask everyone there what they thought about it, but of course that was off the table.

Literally, as the book was in his backpack.

Okay, well he hadn’t said that aloud, therefore he had no one to apologize to.

“Aren’t you?” Jake asked, nudging him in the side.

“Huh?” Rich asked, turning to face him.  “Sorry, what’d you thay?” To Rich’s horror, his lisp slipped through on ‘say.’  But how was that possible? The Squip had made sure from the start that Rich had to drink a _ton_ of alcohol before his lisp came through.  The only reason it would come through would be if the Squip was letting it.

**Pay attention, Richard.**

Rich swallowed and refocused on Jake.

“I said you're glad you joined the Swim Team, aren’t you?”

**Yes.**

“Oh, yeah.”  Honestly, Rich would have preferred Debate Club.

**No.**

No, he wouldn’t.  Debate Club was for nerds.

“Why do you ask?” Rich continued, hiding his relief at the lisp not being there.

“Just trying to prove a point.” Jake said before whirling back to Chloe.  “See, if Rich likes after school clubs than you totally would too.”

Definitely more at ease than before break.

“Rich is a newbie who’s never been in any clubs before.  He has no level of comparison. The schools clubs are crappy.” Chloe deadpanned, eating another bite of her cupcake (Chloe’s usually brought her own lunch.)

**Of course I’ve been in clubs before.**

“Of course I’ve been in clubs before.” Rich said easily.  “I was on the Football Team back home. I just felt like trying something new.”

“But doesn’t that mean you still can’t accurately judge the difference between the clubs since you haven’t been on both football teams?” Jenna pointed out.

Rich paused, and shrugged.  “She makes a fair point.” he admitted to Jake.

“Wha— Rich, cummon, back me up here!”

Rich adopted an innocent smile and shrugged again.  “Sorry dude, but you can’t argue with cold hard facts.”

“Ugh, you suck.”

“And none of that matters anyway, because this is all about whether or not _I_ would like after school clubs, and the answer still remains no.” Chloe said, finishing her cupcake.

_“How would you know that if you’ve never been in one?”_ Jake said, purposely enunciating each word more than the one before it.

“I just do.”

“Now _you’re_ the one who’s making no sense!”

Brooke laughed from her seat.  “Well, Rich, you’re our unofficial moderator.  Who’s right?”

_Huh.  Debate club._

Rich put a hand to his chin in musing.  “Well, Chloe is more likely to know what she likes.”

“Ha!” Chloe snapped, as Jake shot him an betrayed look.

“However, according to every parents rule for their five year olds, ‘You have to try it before you decide whether or not you like it.’  Or some variation of such rule depending on the parent.” Rich continued.

“Ha!” Jake retaliated at Chloe.

“True geniuses of insult, you two.” Jenna muttered with a role of her eyes.

“Therefore,” Rich continued, holding up a finger as if to call for silence.  “I decree…”

Everyone leaned forward with bated breath.

“That there is no conclusion because you are both stubborn idiots who will refuse to change your opinion.”

Brooke and Jenna both laughed while Chloe narrowed her eyes.  Jake shrugged. “You are correct.”

Why had these people seemed so intimidating during freshman year?  They were far too easygoing to be mean. Well, except maybe Chloe. Was it just because he knew them all now?  That didn’t seem right. Maybe some of his fears had been unfounded— maybe some of everyone’s fears were unfounded.  He wondered had he just walked up to the table freshman year and asked to sit, if they would have really turned him away.

**Of course they would have.**

Right.

The bell rang overhead and everyone stood and left the lunchroom.

Rich had P.E. right after lunch which, as you could imagine, was… well, there’s a reason people aren’t supposed to eat right before they run.  He’d leave it at that. He had been outlawed by the Squip from watching Jake play any sports, so he couldn’t enjoy that anymore either. Simply put, P.E. had moved from Rich’s second favorite class to his least favorite, and “popular rules” meant he had to _act_ like it was his favorite.

Which just ended up making Rich miserable.  So yeah, P.E. wasn’t the greatest. At least the Squip was able to make him better at all the sports they played.

Currently, it was volleyball.  Jake was on the Volleyball Team, but had admitted to Rich before he didn’t care for it much.  Rich couldn’t help but wonder why he’d joined it in the first place. Maybe it was a chick magnet.

**Speaking of such,** the Squip said as Rich hit the ball back over the net.   **It is about time you get a girlfriend again.**

The idea of such a thing made Rich feel queasy, enough that he almost missed the ball when it was hit towards him the next time.  Or maybe that was his lunch.

_Do I have to?_ Rich asked the Squip.

“Focus, Richard!” the gym teacher called from the side of the court.

**I have already explained the benefits of having a girlfriend.  Must I go over them a second time?**

_Aren’t I already popular enough?  Do I really need another girlfriend?_

**There is no such thing as popular “enough.”  Although, you make a fair point. It is not likely getting a new girlfriend will increase your popularity by large numbers.**

_Great!  Does that mean I don’t have to get one?_

Even in his head Rich sounded way too eager.

**We’ll see.**

Rich tried to squash the relief that brought him, because he was pretty sure he’d never wanted a girlfriend less in his life.  He was also pretty sure that was pretty pathetic.

The buzzer went off signaling the end of the game, and Rich went to sit down at the side of the gym as the next team walked out to the court, not even bothering to look at who won.

“Ugh.” he muttered to himself, quiet enough that no one else could hear lest he let on that he wasn’t really enjoying this.  It had been a very long day, and he still had three classes to go.

What was the point of this anyway?  It wasn’t like he was going to have to draw back on his volleyball skills later in life.  He was going to be an author. That or an English teacher.

**Absolutely not.**

Rich twitched slightly in surprise.  He’d forgotten for a second that the Squip was there, and now suddenly he couldn’t think about anything else.  Would the Squip get to pick his job? His college major? Where he lived? Who he married? What did having a Squip for the rest of his life even look like?

**Don’t worry about it.  We’ll face those things as they come.  You have to play again.**

They were right, the buzzer was going off.  Rich shook the (frankly disturbing) thoughts from his head and climbed up to get on the court again.

Maybe the Squip was right, and it was best he didn’t think about it.  After all, they had to have his best interests at heart, right? Wasn’t that in their programming?


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And birthdays are the kind of things that would definitely be more fun without a Squip.

Valentine’s Day sucked, okay?  That was something everyone at the table agreed on, or at least for this year.  Though to be fair, everyone this year had gone through messy breakups, bar Jenna, and none of them had a new partner yet… bar Chloe.

And due to the unspoken rule in every high school that the popular kids ran everything, no students in the sophomore class even mentioned Valentine’s Day while they were around.

But you could believe he very single one of them was thinking about it.

Rich had never been a huge fan of Valentine’s Day even without an ex-girlfriend or Squip.  Maybe, if he thought about it, it was _because_ he didn’t have any experience with a girlfriend or a Squip.  But the experience didn’t make this Valentine’s Day any better.  Would he have liked it more if he was still dating Jessica? He didn’t think so.

At least schools never really did anything for Valentine’s Day, so he didn’t have any decorations to ignore or teachers or parties to tune out (not that the school ever had parties for anything anyway).  For the most part he could just pretend today was a normal day at school. Except for lunch, when everyone was shooting their table weird looks which all of them were ignoring.

Rich had learned by now that the way issues were gotten over in this particular group was to not talk about it and hope they went away.  It didn’t seem like such a great idea to Rich but hey, it had worked so far. So instead of acknowledging the obvious tension everyone could feel, Chloe was ranting about Madeline and everyone was pretending to listen.  Or he thought that was what was happening, maybe it was something else by now. Rich had honestly tuned out ages ago. The Squip would shock him if he ever needed to pay attention, so he wasn’t terribly worried.

He wanted to read 1984 again.  The Squip was absolutely refusing to let him read past the assigned chapters, so unfortunately that meant a lot of cliffhangers that usually remained an enormous question in Rich’s mind until the night before the assigned chapters were due.  They were right near the end of the book, and that meant the cliffhanger stuck in his head right now was a pretty huge one. At least he would get to finish the book soon. At least he never had to half-ass the assignments about the book. If he was stuck or got writer's block the Squip would take over.

The bell ringing overhead jolted Rich from his thoughts.  He groaned. “God, I wish the school year was _over.”_ he groaned.  “We are never going to make it to June.”

Jake sighed.  “I feel ya, Rich.  Just wait ‘till I through my End of School Party.  Those are always the best.”

“Yeah, they’re my favorite.” Brooke said happily, just before the group split off outside the lunchroom and Rich and Jake went to the gym.

“Is the End of School Party a big deal?” Rich asked like he didn’t already know.

“It is by far my best party of the year.” Jake said.  “Probably because school just got out and I can focus all my energy on it.”

Probably also because everyone is excited that school is over and already riding a feelings-high and they’re 100% prepared to get drunk or stoned and that means their ideas of what’s actually good are lowered, but yeah, mostly it was Jake.  He threw really good parties.

“Speaking of parties, that reminds me.” Jake was saying.  “When’s your birthday? Brooke’s is in March and Chloe’s is in July, but I throw them both a party, so I have to do one for you too.”

“Oh, you don’t really have to—” Rich started, but was immediately cut off.

“Ah ah ah.  When is it?”

Rich grimaced inwardly and smiled outwardly.  “February 18th.”

“What?  Dude, that’s four days away, why didn’t you say anything?!”

**Use the new kid excuse.**

“Well I didn’t know you were going to insist on throwing me a party!”

Yes he did.  That had been specifically what he was trying to avoid.  The Squip had let it slide because everyone thought he was new and wouldn’t know his birthday anyway, but Rich’s reason was that he _really_ didn’t want one of Jake’s parties for his birthday.  It wasn’t at any offense to Jake, it was just that Rich would have preferred a small celebration with a close group of friends as opposed to… you know.  A party like Jake usually threw.

“Okay, okay, you know what, there’s still time.  Get me a list of stuff you like, and I’ll put it together.  I’ll have Brooke help me out too to make it easier…” and just like that he was off in his own world, already planning stuff.

Rich couldn’t help but sigh— inwardly anyway, the Squip would never let Jake hear.  To be fair, it wasn’t like his birthday would be much better if he spent it alone at his house.  At least with Jake planning a party he could get to spend his birthday with his friends, right?

He was rationalizing, and he knew that.  Time for gym.

…

Rich’s birthday started pretty normal.  He got up, deleted a text from Matt wishing him a happy birthday, got ready for school, snuck out of the house past his father with help from his Squip, got in the car when Steven pulled up driving it, and went to first period English wishing he could have read more of 1984.

But by lunchtime (because that’s when everything important happened), Rich could tell Jake was serious about this birthday thing.  He was at the table with a giant container of chocolate cupcakes (Rich hated chocolate flavoring, but for whatever reason the Squip said that was not acceptable).  Rich sat down only for Brooke to jump up and give him a giant “Happy Birthday!” exclamation, along with a hug. Well, that part was expected, it was Brooke.

**Take a cupcake.**

_Yeah, yeah._

Rich did just that, about to thank Jake again for getting them before the Squip piped up.

**He offered to do this, he didn’t have to.  Besides, thanking him makes you look humble.**

Rich would have raised an eyebrow at the Squip if he was allowed to interact with it when they weren’t alone.   _Is that a bad thing?_

**Eat the cupcake.**

That sounded ridiculously threatening.  Rich choked the cupcake down as quickly as he could, with the Squip managing to cover for the fact that he did not like it one bit.  He wasn’t even sure whether anyone would’ve noticed or not, due to all of them eating their own cupcakes and talking about various things.

Rich ate another cupcake (prompted by the Squip) before the lunch period ended, and at that point said he would see Brooke and Chloe that night (he had no classes with them that afternoon) and went to P.E.

At the end of the school day Rich left all his stuff in his locker and went straight to Jake’s house with everyone else.

When they got there, everyone went into their own room and immediately started setting things up in the ways they all knew how— Brooke to the living room, Steven and Abigail to the kitchen, Jake to block off certain areas of the house, and Jenna to the bar.  Everyone who had been to a Jake Dillinger birthday party before knew the legends of the intricate dance used to set them up. They all had it down to an art form.

Jenna dragged Rich along to help her with the bar, and most of the drinks were ones Rich had never seen before.  The Squip helped him pretend like he had, and the bar was set up by the time Jake was finished blocking off the back of the house.

Jake pulled Rich to the side to explain how the party was going to work and Rich pretended like he hadn’t known until now.  “And of course we have several cakes—” Chocolate fucking cake. “And at some point we’re going to drag everyone into the kitchen and you’re going to shove your face in one.”

Rich burst out laughing.  “Are you serious?” he asked, grinning.

Jake grinned back.  “It is a tradition as old as the parties themselves.”

**It’s also not technically cool, but it would be worse if you refused.**

_Thanks._  He really hadn’t needed that commentary.

“We also don’t open the bar until after everyone has had cake, so—”

“So basically I shove my face in a cake and then everyone goes and gets drunk.”

“Yep.”

“Can’t wait.”

Jake grinned wider.  “Glad you like it, ‘cause the guests will be here soon and it’s kind of too late to change the plan.”

The two both began to move towards the living room where they would greet all the guests.  “This plan has been preestablished for years, I doubt you would let me change it anyway.” Rich said.

“Good point.”

…

The party was pretty much exactly what Rich was expecting.  Everyone showed up, he got a few half-assed ‘happy birthdays’ from people, and they wandered around the house finding the people they usually came to Jake Dillinger’s parties for.  At 8:00, everyone gathered in the kitchen to watch Rich shove his face in one of the cakes, everyone cheered, and then they flooded en masse to the bar.

Rich chuckled and shook his head, although the ‘I am the mature one laughing at the immature teenagers’ look was kind of ruined by the cake covering his face.

“Here.” Jenna offered him a towel.

**Eat the cake off your face.**

Rich rolled his eyes inwardly before grinning at Jenna and licking the frosting off the corner of his mouth.

Jenna rolled her eyes outwardly before setting the towel down.  “Okay, weirdo.” As soon as she left the Squip gave permission to use the towel, but Rich continued to eat whatever cake was in reach of his tongue until it was gone.  What? The cake was _good_ (and it had the added benefit of not being chocolate icing he was eating).

Eventually he got the towel wet and scrubbed his face clean, then got an actual piece of cake to eat— vanilla, due to being the only one in the kitchen.  As he leaned back against the kitchen counter there was a loud crash from the direction of the bar. He laughed again to himself.

“Happy Birthday, Rich,” he said to himself, smiling.  It might not be exactly what he wanted, but no one had thrown him an actual birthday party since his mother was alive— Matt and him had tried to celebrate each other’s, but they were only two people— and it actually felt pretty great that people cared enough to do so.

_Hey where’s your birthday present?_ Rich thought at the Squip.

**Improving your life is my birthday present.** they replied.  They sounded amused.   **And letting you eat vanilla cake.**

_Yeah, chocolate cake sucks!_

The Squip chuckled from their spot leaning next to him.  Somewhere in the distance someone was screaming angrily at someone named Paul, then there was a crash, followed by roaring laughter.

**Happy birthday, kid.**

…

June 6

Rich was fingering his phone and waiting for the Squip to stop him, but they weren’t saying anything.

Rich pulled open the text app and typed a message, letting it sit there for a while, debating whether or not he was going to send it.

_You’re really not going to stop me?_ Rich asked the Squip.

**Stop what?** the Squip asked innocently.

_You don’t have to pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about._

**Opening the text app?**

Well, that probably as close to a yes as he was gonna get.

_Happy Birthday Matt._

Rich sent the text.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of the school year, full of fun, excitement, play productions, and horrible supercomputers.

“Remind me again why I’m here?”

“Shhh.” Jake shoved at him to get him to be quiet, which resulted in their hands brushing, and Rich tried to ignore the pathetic way his chest tingled at that.  Why did it always do that? “I’m trying to watch.”

“Dude, since when do you care about this stuff?”

“Yea, noise? then I'll be brief. O happy dagger!” cried the girl on the stage, and Rich’s attention was pulled back to her.  Christine, Rich thought her name was. Although right now she was Juliet.

The Theatre Department was putting on a production of _Romeo and Juliet_ that the whole school had to watch, and to be frank, Rich was absolutely floored (though of course he couldn’t let that fact show).  That Christine girl could _act._

Up on the stage, Christine grabbed Romeo’s prop dagger.  “This is thy sheath;” she stabbed herself, and Jake gasped next to him, “there rust, and let me die.”  She fell on top of the boy playing Romeo and went absolutely still.

Rich’s mouth would have fallen open if the Squip wasn’t keeping it shut.  Holy shit, he had to talk to this girl. How the hell did she do that? And he was pretty sure he’d seen tears a couple lines ago, so apparently she could make herself cry on command.

**Christine is not currently popular enough to be seen talking to.**

_I can’t even tell her good job?_

**No.**

Rich sighed inwardly.   _Fine._

When everyone got up to do the curtain call, everyone clapped politely, including Rich, who was not allowed to clap louder.  Jake was still staring at Christine, and it took Rich a second to realize why.

“Oh my God,” he said, and Jake turned to him.  “You’re a lovesick puppy.” Something in his chest stung, and Rich ignored it.

“What?  No, no, I just—” he gasped.  “Oh my gosh, she’s doing a victory dance!”

_It’s called a bow, dumbass._ Rich wanted to say.  But the Squip wasn’t letting him, and there was still a quickly forming lump in his throat for which he couldn’t place the reason.

What he did know is he suddenly kind of hated Christine.

But he couldn’t place the reason for that either.

…

Sometimes Rich forgot he wasn’t a new kid.  Sometimes he had to remind himself he already knew what Middleborough did about this thing, or he already knew what everyone thought about this person, or he already knew how much Mr. Reyes hated Mrs. Brown (and vice versa).  This was mostly because he felt like a completely different person than he had once been. The Rich Goranski who had been to this school before was Freshman Rich Goranski. Freshman Rich Goranski was an English Nerd, an amateur gamer, he was a loser with no friends, a loser with a lisp, and a loser who couldn’t stop admiring Jake Dillinger from a distance because he wanted to be ~~with~~ him.

Sophomore Rich Goranski was not any of those things.  He had friends, no lisp, and no nerdy interests, ~~even if he did still stare at Jake Dillinger sometimes.~~

But one instance where Rich definitely did not have to remind himself that he wasn’t a new kid was the end of the school year.

To be fair, parts of it were probably the same in every high school, with the air feeling impatient and tense, the students scrambling to find anything to write with due to all their pencils being gone, and the mad rush for finals for everyone else while Squipped people were off to the side sipping their wine and laughing at the commoners— okay, maybe that was still just Rich.

But the end of the year at Middleborough was also almost entirely focused on Jake Dillinger’s End of the Year Party, something even the juniors and seniors wanted to go to.  While Rich personally thought the majority of Jake’s parties were pretty similar (though he would never say that out loud even without a Squip), everyone seemed to go nuts for the End of the Year Party in particular.  Maybe a lot of it really was the adrenaline or the school year ending.

The Squip had already said weeks ago that it was imperative Rich spend time with Jake over the summer (since Jake _could not_ become a “school friend”), unlike Christmas break, which naturally made Rich much happier, so Rich found himself really enjoying things at the end of the year.  Jenna knew well enough not to make another bet with Rich about finals, so most of the lunchtime conversation took on a completely different topic— an obvious one.  Summer plans.

Apparently the group as a whole didn’t get together much over the summer, but they all kept up the restaurant tradition, just every couple weeks instead of every Friday.

How close was this group, exactly?  There were times Rich felt like they would do anything for each other, but other times he felt like “anything” was a major stretch.  When push came to shove, would they have each other’s backs, or be at each other’s throats?

When the last day of school rolled around, and after everyone finished their last final, everyone was waiting in the rooms they had been in, talking about everything and nothing.  Rich was talking to Jake, since the two shared their last class of the day together. And as he looked over at him, Rich was struck by the realization that he would do anything for Jake, even if the opposite wasn’t true.  And that was suddenly very scary.

Until the Squip chimed in and made the whole thing more annoying than anything else.

**First of all, the very concept that you would do anything for someone else is ridiculous.  Second of all, even if such a thing could be true, I would stop you before you did something ridiculous or irreversible, so there really is no need to worry.**

_Yeah, thanks._ Rich thought back in as sarcastic a tone as he could.

“Hey, have you used the pool at my house yet?” Jake asked.

Rich shook his head.  He had helped Jake set up the pool in the spring, but by the time they’d finished it had been past midnight (they were only two people) and Rich had to go home.  He had learned after his very first party that staying after at someone’s house was not a good plan.

“Okay, well it’s not allowed for parties due to the fact that people tend to dump their beer in it, but you can come over and use it anytime you want.”

“Uh… yeah.”  Except he couldn’t swim.

**You are aware I can help with that, correct?**

_Oh yeah._

Rich was supposed to have taken swim lessons when he was younger just like Matt had, but the plans were interrupted by the death of his mother.  Sometimes when he thought about it he almost laughed. His mother died, and as a result he couldn’t swim. How sad. Matt had tried to teach him once, but Rich had been having none of it.  Eventually he started crying right on the side of the public pool, and after that Matt just took him home and the two watched Mulan and ate Mac and Cheese.

“Thanks.” Rich added on to the end of his comment to Jake.

**Ask him what he does over the summer.**

“What do you usually do over the summer anyway?” Rich asked.

“Well, lots of parties.  Naturally. Though the number of people who come is usually smaller than it is during the school year.  Go to the restaurants with everyone else. And… I dunno. It’s up to you. I mean, we’re spending time together, I shouldn’t get to pick everything we do.”

Rich thought for a minute, and when the Squip didn’t object, said, “You ever been to Sbarro?”

Jake didn’t get the chance to answer when someone walked through the door and handed a paper to their teacher, and Jake was suddenly staring at her— yep, Christine goddamn Canigula.  The Christine who Rich had grown to hate a little more every time Jake brought her up, and that he now despised with the very depth of his soul. Which wasn’t fair. Christine hadn’t done anything to him (honestly, he doubted she even knew he hated her), and it wasn’t like he could beat her up.  For Pete’s sake, Jake had a _crush_ on her!

Rich figured his life would become a whole lot easier if he could take all his misplaced hatred for Christine and transfer it onto Jeremy Heere— you know, the guy he shoved into lockers and wrote on his backpack and even gave him a swirly once?  The guy he was fucking _supposed_ to hate?  What was wrong with him?

“Yeah, of course I’ve been to Sbarro.” Jake said eventually. “Fucking amazing pizza.”  He was still staring as Christine left.

So Rich, like any good best friend, took a breath and voluntarily tore himself apart from the inside.  “Dude.” he said to Jake. “I can’t watch you do this to yourself.”

Why was this bothering him so much?  He didn’t care when Jake was dating Chloe.  Was it because they were dating before he joined the group?  Was… was it because everyone knew they wouldn’t last? Was he that selfish?  Why did he even care? It wasn’t like he liked Jake. That was ridiculous. He wasn’t gay.

**Right.**

“What?” Jake asked.

“Jake, it is so obvious you like her.  You should ask her out.”

“No, no, I can’t, I wouldn’t know what to say, I—”

_Oh my God.  He’s so flustered and it’s adorable._

“Jake, oh my God.  Are you even hearing yourself?  You are _Jake Dillinger._  You are literally the most popular boy at this school.  A girl would have to be out of her mind to turn down a date with you.”

Jake still looked nervous.  “I dunno. It’s the end of the year anyway.  Maybe next year.”

Rich raised his eyebrows.  “Don’t think I can’t tell what you’re doing.”

“…What?”

“Fine.  You do not have to ask her this year if _next_ year you join the play, and that way you spend more time with her.”

“I—”

Rich stuck out his hand.  “Deal?”

Jake smiled a little before shaking.  “Deal.”

“Good.”

Well, Rich had just signed himself up for a year of torture.  He was probably going to have to join the play himself just for ‘emotional support’ and shit.

**Most definitely.**

When the last couple minutes of class finally rolled around, most people were shooting glance after glance at the clock.

“Hey, so,” Jake said, and Rich glanced over.  “What was your favorite part of the year? You know, since you were new and all.”

“Reading 1984.”  It slipped out before Rich could even think about it.

He had finished 1984 a couple months ago, and seriously, that ending.  But that was one of those _things that Richard Goranski has to keep to himself._  It was one of the ones on a separate list of _things that Richard Goranski has to keep to himself and definitely cannot tell Jake Dillinger his best friend about._

The Squip was silent, and Rich didn’t know what to make of that, because they didn’t seem happy, but they weren’t saying anything.

Jake was staring at him in confusion.  “Wait, really?”

**Laugh.**

Rich forced a laugh out, because yeah, that was his best option at this point— pass it off as a joke.

Luckily, Jake Dillinger, winner of the ‘World’s Most Gullible Oblivious Idiot Award’ two years running, laughed.  “Dude, you had me going for a second,” he said.

“Ha ha, yeah.” Rich muttered, rubbing the back of his neck, because geez, would it really have bothered him that much?

“Seriously though, favorite part.”

**His parties.**

“Parties, duh.” Rich said with a grin.  The Squip was freaking him out. They were saying everything in short, clipped sentences that reminded Rich of his dad when he was really pissed about something.

Jake grinned back.  “Yeah, really?”

“Dude, you throw really amazing parties.”  The Squip still said nothing. What was happening?

Finally, the bell rang overhead and then came the inevitable cheer.  Due to it being the last day of school, Rich had nothing with him, so he went outside with Jake to meet up with everyone at Steven’s car.  Rich supposed he would see less of Steven and Abigail next year. Most of the group was supposed to be getting driver’s licenses over the summer, and Jake was rich enough to buy his own car, so that was going to become everyone’s new mode of transportation.  He’d probably still see them at parties.

Rich felt an anxious buzz in his stomach the whole way back to his house.  The Squip had said nothing since school had let out. He pushed open the car door, with the only reason his hands weren’t shaking being the reason for why they would.

He still waved goodbye like nothing was wrong.  Still walked confidently up to the house and crept past his father in front of the TV.  Still opened his bed door as quietly as possible and sat down on the bed before the Squip finally shocked him— badly.  Enough that Rich would have cried out if they hadn’t blocked that too.

_I’m sorry!_ Rich thought at the Squip.   _I didn’t mean to— I just—_

**I elected today to give you a test.  I thought you might be capable of acting correctly on your own.  You have proven me wrong yet again.**

They had been awfully quiet that day, but Rich hadn’t realized it was because they were testing him.   _But— you fixed it, right?_

**Precisely.  It was** **_me_ ** **that fixed it.  You wonder why I cannot let you do things yourself, Richard?  There is your reason. You ruin it every time. You wouldn’t last a week without me.**

_I’m sorry._

**At least you have shame enough for that.  I would find a way to explain to your father that school is out for the summer, or he will not be happy you’re not at school.  I don’t recommend making him angry.**

_You’re not going to help?_

**Maybe if you had done a better job today.**

The Squip vanished, and Rich felt a cold dread settle in his stomach.  He slowly stood up and opened his door just enough so he could hear when his father started moving around, because there was no way in hell he was going to wake him up.  But he also couldn’t open the door too wide or his father would think Rich was spying on him. It was a dangerous balancing act, and one Rich was not very good at.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so sorry. This isn’t even going to be the worst chapter.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The house is empty, and it’s not fun.

“It… looks much less impressive than I thought it would.”

_ “Rich!” _ Brooke complained, sticking out a pouty lip.

“Brooke, it looks almost exactly like your learners permit.”

“Yes, except with this one says I can drive by  _ myself.” _

“I still can’t believe you got your license before me.” Jake said with a sigh.  “I was working so freakin’ hard.”

“Eat it, Dillinger!” Brooke said with a grin, waving the license in front of his face.

Both Rich and Chloe laughed at that.

Brooke, Chloe, Rich, and Jake were sitting at the kitchen table in Jake’s house.  It was a lazy Saturday afternoon in mid-July, about a week after Chloe’s birthday, and even though they were all admiring Brooke’s drivers license, everyone was there was for a very specific reason— Jake’s parents were on the run from the law now.  They had laundered money and now they had to drop everything and leave, and the everything just so happened to include their son.

When Jake had called and told Rich it had been very obvious he was holding back tears, and that made Rich hate his best friends parents even more, if such a thing was possible.

When Jake had eventually hung up after asking him to come over, Rich had gone straight to the fridge and downed half a can of beer— enough that he could go drink more before the Squip returned but also be sober enough to be there for Jake.

He knew he would probably get his ass kicked later for doing that— twice, actually, once by his father and once by a supercomputer— but the Squip would definitely not have let him provide any source of comfort, and some things were more important than acting cool all the time.

So now Rich was sitting abnormally close to his best friend in case Jake needed to touch another human being.  And Rich could tell Jake was grateful. That made the hell his life was going to become later that night worth it.

Problem was, now that he’d used this method to get a chance to help Jake, he probably wouldn’t be able to do it again.  If something worse came up in the future, what was he supposed to do?

He’d cross that bridge when he came to it— he’d have to, because if he did anything other then come up with a plan on the spot and do it without thinking, the Squip would find a way to prevent it.

Eventually Brooke announced she had had enough of talking and wanted to watch a dumb Disney movie.  When Jake retaliated with a horrified gasp that she could think any Disney movie was dumb, Brooke corrected herself.  She wanted to watch a dumb movie from Disney  _ Channel _ — or anything from Disney Channel, really, as long as she’d seen it before and didn’t have to put any effort into watching.  So everyone gathered in the living room and Chloe suggested High School Musical— to the horrified gasps of  _ everyone. _

“It’s so stupid!” Chloe exclaimed.

“Chloe, that franchise  _ was _ my childhood!” Rich screeched.

“Chloe didn’t see it for the first time until last year, that’s her problem.” Brooke said, pointing an accusatory finger.

“If the only reason you idiots like it is because it holds nostalgic value that just proves my point.” Chloe said, crossing her arms.

Jake suddenly leapt over and scooped Chloe up bridal style.  “Take it back!” he cried.

“Never!”

“Rich, can you help me out here?”

Rich started tickling Chloe until she shrieked and started weakly punching Rich to get him to stop.

“Take it back!” Jake yelled a second time.

“N-never!”

Brooke now joined in on the tickling until Chloe finally gasped, “Fine!  I take it back!”

Jake carried her over to the couch and dropped her, then everyone else sat down while Chloe caught her breath, Brooke pulling her up to make room for Jake and Rich.

They ended up watching The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.  It was indeed a show that they didn’t have to put any effort into watching.  Rich wasn’t even focusing on the show much anyway, because halfway through the first episode everyone ended up in a giant cuddle pile subconsciously centered around Jake which meant that Rich’s entire body was pressed up against him and  _ Jesus Christ heart, what is your problem?  You’re going like a mile a minute and not now, okay?  I’m trying to be there for my best friend. _

The downside of all of this was there was no way for Rich to sneak any more beer.  So the Squip appeared right at the end of an episode and they were wearing the kind of calm expression that meant they were very angry.  Fortunately for the moment, they couldn’t shock Rich right now without risking everyone else feeling it, so Rich was off the hook for as long as the cuddle pile remained.  Unfortunately, the Squip was hell-bent on not letting Rich heard Zack and Cody.

**Richard, this was foolish.**

_ Not now, okay?  You can punish me later. _

**This does not uphold your image.**

_ Yeah well, there are some things more important than being cool, and a best friend is one of them.  If Jake calls me and is upset about something like this, I’m going to be there for him. That’s what best friends do. _

**Maybe if you were both female.  Best friends who are male have different expectations.**

_ His parents just left him.  Let me cut him a break. _

**There is a reason you are not The Real Richard Goranski around Jake.  Do you remember what that reason is?**

_ Because he wouldn’t like me, I get it.  But emotional connections tend to make a friendship stronger, not weaker. _

**It makes** **_you_ ** **look weaker.**

_ I’ll keep that in mind the next time someone’s shitty parents decide to completely abandon their kid.  Now be quiet, it’s the season finale. _

The Squip sighed angrily, but remained silent for the rest of the time he was there.  Maybe they figured they weren’t going to win this battle. Maybe they were planning a way to seriously teach him a lesson.  Maybe they also wanted to watch Zack and Cody. Whatever the reason, Rich was grateful that his head was quiet for the moment.

…

Rich closed the door quietly and hoped to God his dad wasn’t awake.

No such luck.  His father climbed up from the chair in the living room and marched over to where Rich was standing until he towered above him, and normally the Squip would be helping him stand in the way that was least likely to make his father mad, but they were refusing to help in light of what happened earlier, and Rich was finding it a little hard to focus.

“Where the hell were you this afternoon?” his father said.  He wasn’t screaming yet, but he was close.

“I was with Jake.” Rich said quietly.  “We were all planning something for this afternoon.”  It was a straight-up lie, but if he told his father the real reason he was with Jake, that would likely cause problems.

“Oh yeah?  Was it something that involved one of my beers?”

Rich flinched, which immediately gave him away, and resulted in a smack across the face.

“Don’t you know underage drinking is dangerous?”

Rich froze, trying to process whatever the fuck he’d just heard.  He stared up at his father. “W… what?” Had he heard him correctly?

“It’s bad for you.”

Rich stared for a minute, still unable to comprehend what was happening, because what the fuck?  There was no way his father could be this hypocritical.

“And beer costs money.”

That sounded more like his father.

“You steal another one of my beers again and you’re gonna regret it, you here me?”

Rich nodded, still too bewildered to do anything else.  His father stalked away back towards his chair in front of the TV, and Rich walked as quietly as he could to his bedroom.  Did that seriously just happen? He had expected his father to hit him, he had expected the comment about money and the warning doing this kind of thing again, he had  _ not _ expected the ‘underage drinking is dangerous’ lecture.  Didn’t that usually come from decent parents?

The Squip was still absent from his head for the time being, so Rich grabbed his phone and texted his brother.

Rich: _ Hey, um.  Did our father ever lecture about the dangers of underage drinking? _

He set his phone down and had picked up a book— due to the Squip still being absent— and waited until his phone buzzed some time later.

Matt:  _ Wtf?  Are you drunk right now? _

Rich: _ No _

Rich: _ Just really really confused _

Matt:  _ Um, no.  Our father who drinks like there is no tomorrow did not ever lecture me about the dangers of underage drinking. _

Matt:  _ Wtf happened? _

Rich: _ I stole one of his beers _

Matt: _ Rich _

Rich:  _ Yeah I had my reasoms _

Rich:  _ Reasons* _

Matt:  _ Nerd _

Rich:  _ Shut up _

Rich:  _ So I stole one of his beers and then when I got home he did his usual routine _

Matt:  _ Are you okay? _

Rich:  _ I’m good _

Rich:  _ But he also said that _

Rich:  _ And I quote _

Rich:  _ “Don’t you know underage drinking is dangerous?  It’s bad for you” _

Matt:  _ What _

Rich:  _ Right _

Rich:  _ Like I knew our father was shitty but I honestly wouldn’t have pinned him for hypocritical _

Matt:  _ Me neither _

Matt:  _ Geez _

There was a pause in the texting.

Matt:  _ Hey um _

Rich:  _ Yeah? _

Matt:  _ I _

Rich:  _? _

Matt:  _ I might come down there for Halloween _

Rich stared at the phone in surprise and tried to analyze the sudden rush of emotions.  Happiness that his brother could be coming home? Anxiousness at the thought of seeing his brother for the first time in over a year?   _ Dread  _ at the thought of seeing his brother for the first time in over a year?  Slight bit of relief at the fact that Matt hadn’t sprung this on him with a visit?

His phone screen moved slightly with a new notification.

Matt:  _ Rich? _

Rich:  _ … _

Rich:  _ I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Matt _

Matt:  _ I have something to tell you _

Matt:  _ About the tic tac in your head _

Rich looked over to see the Squip was now hovering in the corner, leveling him with a glare.

Rich:  _ That’s really not a good idea _

Matt:  _ It’s important _

Matt:  _ I’m sorry but I have to come _

Rich:  _ … _

Rich looked down at his phone another minute.  He wanted to see Matt so incredibly badly. And if Matt had something important to tell him about the Squip… but that was a couple months away.  Who knew what the Squip would do between then and now. Maybe the Squip only meant the best for him, but 9 times out of 10 that involved hurting Matt in some way.  He wondered how likely it was that Matt could pick up on what was Rich and what was the Squip. He didn’t want that to be a problem. He’d wanted to fix things with his brother since the minute they’d been broken.

Matt had almost seemed to have some kind of sixth sense when it came to the day Rich had come home with a Squip.  He’d taken one look and known instantly what Rich had done. He’d tried to talk to him, but the Squip had told him to go straight to his room, so he had, and locked the door.  After that Rich had ceased speaking to his brother, and that was what had hurt the most out of the whole ordeal. Well, until Rich had discovered the Squip had the ability to shock him, but it was safe to say that was a different kind of pain.

Rich looked down at his phone one more time.

Rich:  _ I’ll see you then. _

He set the phone softly on the nightside table, and Squip suddenly appeared in front of him on his bed.

**Well.  If your brother is coming we have quite a bit of work to do.  We’ll start tomorrow.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I figured I’d post two chapters really quickly in succession to make up for the fact that they’ll most likely be taking longer now, because we are approaching junior year and the beginning of the musical. So here is the second chapter in one day! Don’t get used to it.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer can drag out sometimes, and Rich really wishes it wouldn't.

Junior year crept up on Rich like a freight train.  Ever since his brother had told him he’d be coming on Halloween, the days seemed to have a personal goal to move as slowly as possible, and the Squip, probably purposefully to be annoying, was announcing how many days were left until the school year, and Halloween.

And all this, when a Squip was basically teaching you how to be a complete asshole to your brother, was about as fun as getting hit by the aforementioned freight train.

…

Rich woke up to a loud buzzing that only he could hear.

“Would you stop doing that?” Rich groaned in annoyance, shoving the pillow over his face in an attempt to block out the Squip and get some more sleep.

**That won’t work, Richard.  You know this, I’m inside your brain.**

“I just wanted to sleep until 7AM.” Rich groaned.

**Get up.  We’re going job hunting.**

Rich woke up at that.  “What?” he asked, his voice still slurred with sleep.  “Why?”

**Your father has not been to work in far too long.  It is highly likely he is going to get fired in a week.  You need money for groceries.**

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Rich shoved his head back into the pillow.

**Pinkberry is hiring.**

“Well, I get hired there and I’ll be Brooke’s hero.” Rich said, shoving himself upright and then falling back onto the bed a second later, with his head landing near the bottom.

**Get up.**  This time it was accompanied by a shock.

Rich gave a whimper that sounded pitiful even to him.   _ I want sleep. _  He didn’t bother to say it aloud.

**Richard I know exactly what you have to do if you want to get this job.  They will appreciate someone coming in early, and trust me when I say you need the money.  Unless you want to try something like money laundering.**

Rich sat up in half a second.  “What the fuck—”

**Good, you’re up.**

Rich’s face hardened into a glare.   _ That wasn’t cool. _

**Well, you’re up now.  Get dressed. Put on your nice shirt.  The one in the back of the closet on the hanger.**

Rich glared for another second before climbing up to get the shirt.  Half an hour later he was out the door and heading towards Pinkberry, after a quick stop in the bathroom to make sure the red mark on his cheek from the night before was completely gone.  The Squip could usually speed up the process at which that stuff healed, but it was always better to be safe than sorry.

Pinkberry was thankfully close enough to his house that he could walk, because he had no personal transportation aside from his childhood tricycle in the garage.  He got there and had a short interview where the Squip helped him say all the right things and he left with a job that started tomorrow.

Unfortunately, that meant he had to tell Jake he couldn't make the group restaurant visit.

Jake:  _ Aw, y not? _

Rich:  _ My father wants me to get a job _

Rich:  _ Just so we can have a little extra money _

Jake:  _ He got fired didn’t he _

Rich:  _ … _

Rich:  _ Yes _

Rich:  _ Or he’s close enough that it doesn’t matter _

Jake:  _ If u ever need money I can give u some _

Rich sent a thanks, knowing already he would never ask, because that was showing weakness.

Jake:  _ Where you workin _

Rich:  _ Pinkberry _

Jake:  _!!! _

Jake:  _ AHHH RICH YOU’RE AMAZING _

Jake:  _ HJGFKNMG _

Jake:  _ And Brooke grabbed my phone _

Rich laughed aloud in the middle of walking.

Jake:  _ Dude, we can just come there tomorrow _

Jake:  _ When’s your shift _

Rich:  _ 1-8 _

Rich:  _ PM _

Jake:  _ Cool, we’ll be there _

Jake:  _ See u then _

Rich slipped his phone back into his pocket and walked back home, making it back to his room probably (hopefully) without his father ever knowing he was gone.

**Now, we have other matters to attend to.**

_ About the job? _ Rich thought hopefully.

**About Matt.**

Rich sighed and sat on the bed.   _ Shouldn’t I go shopping for more work clothes? _

**You’ll get a uniform.  This is more important.**

…

“Rich Goranski, is that you?  I barely even recognized you.” Jake saidas he, Chloe, and Brooke walked up to the counter.

Rich rolled his eyes. “Ha, ha very funny.”

“Seriously, it is super weird to see you in clothes that nice.” Brooke added, gesturing to the collared shirt Rich was required to wear underneath the Pinkberry apron.  “And to think that you actually have responsibilities now.”

**Act like you’re offended.  Make sure it’s clear it’s a joke.**

Rich scoffed and put a hand to his chest.  “Are you trying to say I’m not responsible?  Responsibility is my middle name.”

Chloe snorted.  “Yeah, that’s what I think of when I think of you.  Now get ready ‘cause as always I have a super complicated order.”

“Luckily for you I don’t have to make it.  I’m just running the register today.”

“How is that lucky for me?”

“‘Cause otherwise I would’ve murdered you later.  Whaddya want?”

Chloe gave her ridiculously complicated order and stepped to the side.  Brooke always ordered something simple. Whether it was because she actually liked it or to make up for Chloe’s order Rich couldn’t say, but she got it every time and everyone knew she loved Pinkberry, so she had to like it at least a little bit.  And Jake always got the same thing— strawberry yogurt with enough strawberries that you couldn’t see the yogurt anymore. Basically strawberry overload.

They all sat at a table close enough to the counter that they could yell at Rich and only annoy half the customers.

“Guys, I just got this job yesterday, try not to get me fired!” Rich called over.

“Fine, fine!” Jake called back, and after that they left him alone and Rich took orders for the people standing in line without any interruptions about what Jenna had said happened with Madeline.

Chloe and Brooke said goodbye about an hour after finishing their yogurt, but to Rich’s surprise, Jake hung around until the end of Rich’s shift, finding a place to lean against the counter that wouldn’t block anyone so that he and Rich could talk when Rich had no orders to take.  When 8:00 finally rolled around the two left together and Jake offered to drive Rich home, which he accepted (due to the fact that denying would just be rude).

“So, hey.” Jake said as they pulled out of the parking lot.  “Are you okay?”

Rich glanced over in surprise.

**Yes.**

“Yeah,” he said, too caught off guard to do anything else, because since when did Jake pick up on anything that was wrong?

Jake shot him a disbelieving look before returning his gaze to the road.  “Rich, I know what’s it’s like to have issues with your parents. I may not know your entire situation, but I do know that you are most likely not fine.”

“I—”

**Richard.**

“Well, you don’t have to worry about me, because I actually am just— fine.”

Jake still didn’t look convinced.  “Okay, but I am going to buy all your school supplies this year.  No arguing.”

“Jake—”

“I said no arguing.”

**Agree.  It would be worse to keep fighting.**

“Fine.” Rich said with a sigh.  Truth is, it actually would be a huge help, because he was already going to struggle with having enough for groceries, he didn’t know how he was going to have enough for school stuff too.

Jake pulled up at Rich’s house and turned to him one last time.  “Hey man, you know you can talk to me, right?” he asked.

Rich did know that, but he wasn’t sure the Squip got the message.  “Yes,” he said anyway. “Thanks for driving me home.” He climbed out of the car and waved as he headed inside shutting the door behind him.

“Where have you been?” his father asked angrily, turning from the chair.

**Tell him the truth.  It’s not dangerous.**

“I got a job,” Rich said.  “The hours will be less once school starts, but for now they’re pretty long.”

His father  _ hmphed _ and turned back around before flopping backwards into the chair.  “Alright, fine.”

Rich’s chest loosened, and when he made it to his room he let out a relieved sigh.

…

Working every day of the week was not nearly as horrible as Rich had expected.

He wasn’t saying it was fantastic.  He missed seeing Jake as much as he had and being able to do whatever they wanted, and some of the customers were absolutely  _ awful. _  But it was better than the horror stories one heard about working retail, and Rich would’ve had to endure it either way, so he was grateful.

Besides, often his friends came to Pinkberry anyway.  Well, Brooke and Chloe came because it was Brooke’s favorite place to get frozen yogurt, and she liked it over most ice cream places.  Jake, on the other hand, came almost everyday and ordered something small, then stood in his usual spot by the counter. (Rich wasn’t quite sure if it bothered his boss or not, but she hadn’t said anything.)  Rich sometimes thought about the fact that even though they were considered part of the “popular group,” he and Jake seemed to be each other’s only friends. Was it weird that he didn’t mind?

According to the Squip, once he started school no one could know he had a job because no one could know he needed one, but they had already taken precautions to make sure no one would find out, so Rich didn’t even need to worry about it, he just shouldn’t tell anyone.

Rich checked his phone every now and then (every single morning) to see how long there was until Junior year started, mostly trying to pretend he didn’t have a supercomputer that forcibly reminded him every day.  And somehow there was still almost a month until August 17. It wasn’t like he was looking forward to it, because it was school. But it would be nice to not have to work 8 hours a day, and of course there was Halloween to look forward to.

Just the holiday, of course.  Because it was his favorite. Not because of anything specific.

“Did you do the summer reading yet?” Jake asked from his spot at the counter.  Because Rich had gotten such good grades in English last year (which he probably would have gotten anyway, but whatever), the school was putting him in Honors English for Junior year.  And Jake was actually very smart himself— he had to be, or they would never let him do so many extracurriculars. But that put him up in honors classes with Rich. And Honors English usually hard summer reading.

And of course Rich had already done it.  The Squip told him to get it done quickly and pretend like he hadn’t, so the book had  _ been _ his first week off of school.  Jake was just a little more lax about doing homework over breaks.  Not a completely bizarre stance to take.

Rich still smacked his forehead and pretended to groan.  “Ugh, I forgot all about that!” he said. “Well, the book isn’t that long, I still have time.”

“Probably, yeah.  I still have to start too.” Jake said.  “So hey, do you wanna go to Sbarro tomorrow?  You’re off, right?”

“Yeah, I’m off, and sure, we can go.  Why?”

“You mentioned it the last day of school and we still haven’t gotten a chance to go.”

**Mention the pool.**

“Oh, and earlier in the afternoon we can swim in your pool, right? ‘Cause we haven’t done that yet either?”

Jake lit up.  “Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.”

And then Rich was hit by a realization, because something else that had been said on the last day of school by Jake was that he had lots of parties over the summer.  And yet so far the summer was suspiciously party-free, aside from Chloe’s birthday. And Rich and Jake were here, almost every day, at Pinkberry. Was that the reason Jake hadn’t thrown any parties?  Because he wanted to spend time with Rich? Well, then again, he could just as easily pin the blame on his parents.

Maybe it was both?

Nah.  Probably just his parents.

…

Okay, so swimming with a Squip was absolutely terrifying.

Because, seriously, Rich couldn’t swim.  The Squip had literally helped Rich every single swim meet the previous year, and it had not gotten any easier.  When the only reason he was moving around in the water like a fish was because of the waterproof supercomputer in his head— it was waterproof, right?  Definitely. He had to shower. If was definitely waterproof. Probably. Hopefully it was waterproof— well, it was a little scary. At any second the Squip could just stop controlling his limbs, and then Rich would drown.

**Calm down, Richard.  I wouldn’t do that.**

_ You wouldn’t? _

**Of course not.  Jake thinks you can swim.**

That didn’t exactly make him feel better.  He was too terrified to even stare at Jake in his bathing suit and then deny he was doing so.

Not that he would do that.  Why would he want to look at boys in bathing suits?  That was something you did if you were gay.

Okay, that was probably a little offensive to aforementioned gay people.

It wasn’t like Jake being shirtless was that attractive anyway.

“I kinda expected your pool to be… I dunno.” Rich said, finally getting a chance to hold onto the wall so he didn’t have to fear for his life.

“What?  Bigger?” Jake asked.  “It’s pretty big already.”

“Shaped like something.”

Jake paused a moment before laughing.  “What?”

“I don’t know, man.  Your house always seemed pretty… extra.”

He could’ve sworn he actually heard the Squip smacking their forehead.

Jake laughed again.  “What is it supposed to be shaped like?  A guitar? The state of New Jersey?”

Rich grinned.  “Sbarro logo.”

Jake laughed even harder at that.  “Your expectations are set too high, dude.”

“Maybe you just can’t meet them.”

“Oh, I see, this is my fault.” Jake said, but he still grinning, so Rich was pretty sure he wasn’t upset.

“Of course.  It’s your pool.”

Something in Rich’s chest expanded like a balloon whenever he made Jake laugh, because he was pretty sure Jake’s laughter was the greatest sound in the history of the universe.

Eventually they both climbed out and dried off.  Rich changed into his shorts and the extra shirt he’d brought.  Jake probably thought Rich was one of those guys who swam with his shirt on, and he was kind of right.

Rich had to hide the Squip scars.

…

Sbarro was  _ the _ restaurant when Rich was a kid.  It wasn’t anyplace fancy, but his family went there every single birthday dinner— which weren’t really that special since they went there so often anyway— and Rich hadn’t gotten to go there for far too long.

So of course they both got a pizza to share, because the pizza was the whole reason they were going.

Jake, as the boring person he was, got his half with solely pepperoni.  And Rich, since he was not boring, got his half with meat lovers.

“Geez, Rich, you think you have enough toppings?” Jake asked.

“Don’t judge me.” Rich said, then took a bite of pizza, and then proceed to purposely talk with his mouth full.  “It’th delithouth.”

Jake laughed.  “Dude, there’s sausage falling out of your mouth and its gross.”

Rich swallowed the large bite, rather painfully.  “Thanks.” he said with a grin.

“Ugh.” Jake groaned, looking away and using his hand to shield himself from Rich’s face.  “Now there’s three different kinds of meat stuck in your teeth.”

Rich laughed before taking another bite of pizza.  “I used to come here all the time as a kid.” he said, looking around fondly.

“Why’d you stop?” Jake asked casually.

**Don’t give anything away.**

“No reason in particular,” Rich answered just as casually.  “I shouldn’t have, though.”

It had held a lot of memories, and by the time he and Matt had saved up enough money to afford it, neither of them had wanted to confront those memories.  Rich didn’t know if it had been long enough that he had moved on, or if it was the fact that he wasn’t going with Matt at all, but whatever the reason, he was glad to be back.

He and Jake mostly talked about casual nothings for the rest of the time they were there.  They finished eating the pizza around 8, and by that point Rich was pushing his luck. He had to get home before his father fell asleep or he’d be in trouble, and he could only use the job as an excuse so many times.

Why Rich had a curfew he had no idea.  Probably about as easy to guess as the reason his father would give him an underage drinking lecture.  He honestly hadn’t thought his father had cared enough to do either of things before he’d actually done them.  It wasn’t like it mattered. He didn’t care  _ enough _ either way.

Rich got home while his father was fumbling around in the kitchen for something, maybe food, probably beer.

He slipped into his bedroom unnoticed aside from closing the front door.

When he fell asleep he had nightmares about Matt that he couldn’t otherwise remember when he woke up the next morning.

…

Tomorrow was the start of school.  Rich didn’t know if he was supposed to care or not anymore.

He didn’t have to work as much, and his pay couldn’t go down any further than minimum wage, so he supposed that was a good thing, as long as he could still afford enough groceries.  For two people. On minimum wage.

He needed money.  The Squip had said they were working on it, and they somehow had a plan to get him $200, which Rich couldn’t even begin to figure out.  He had told them flat out he wasn’t doing anything illegal, and the Squip had pointed out that they were technically illegal.

_ You know what I meant. _ Rich thought.

**You won’t have a problem with this Richard.  Trust me.**

So he did, because what else could he do?

Jake’s Back-to-School party was that Sunday.  He had never had a Back-to-School party before, and why anyone would go to a party the night before school started, Rich had no idea, but of course people would show up anyway.  Jake had admitted to Rich that the house was even emptier than it had been before, and Rich had thought that was probably exactly why he was throwing this party, especially since he couldn’t spend all day with Rich at Pinkberry anymore.  Rich hadn’t been able to say anything to Jake’s comment, because he hadn’t physically been allowed to.

Rich didn’t know if he even wanted school to be starting again.  He didn’t know anything anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we have reached the start of the musical. Thank you for being so patient for this chapter. It is longer than usual, I hope that somewhat makes up for it.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This... was not what Rich wanted. This was absolutely not what he wanted. And he couldn't stop any of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, welcome to my absolutely ridiculous writing schedule, where I say something is going to take longer, I take a week on a chapter, and then I publish the next chapter that same day. Enjoy your spoils!

Junior school began very differently from sophomore year, mostly because unlike last year, he was not a “new kid.”  He was also already friends with Jake Dillinger, so as soon as he walked into school he went up to talk to him.

Well, actually no.  As soon as he went into school he was run into by the loser known as Jeremy Heere.

He knew the drill by now.

“Hey, don’t touch me, tall-ass!” Rich snapped.

Jeremy sputtered out an apology before the Squip told Rich to grab him.  “Don’t move.” he said, using a voice that told Jeremy he better not fucking move.

**Write ‘B-o-y-f’ on his backpack.**

_ What? _

Rich did it anyway.  “You wash that off and you’re dead,” he spat at Jeremy, and then he noticed Jake.

“Hey, Jakey D!” he called.  “Hey, what’s the story with Madeline?”

There was a rumor about the two of them, started by Jenna Rolan, because wasn’t everything?

Jake laughed.  “Oh, man. I shouldn’t say.” He leaned into Rich.  “But it’s a good thing I rock at pool.”

As the two walked farther down the hall Rich noticed Jeremy’s friend, and then was promptly told by the Squip to grab him in a similar manner.

The Headphones Kid sighed and turned when Rich called his name.  “Whaddaya want, Rich?”

**Now write ‘R-e-i-n-d-s’ on his backpack.**

Rich leaned forward and spun him around.  “Don’t move.” he said for a second timed, as Jake casually leaned back against the lockers nearby and turned a blind eye.

_ If you’re trying to spell ‘Boyf Riends’ you’re doing it wrong. _

**That is intentional.**

_ Ugh, that’s gonna bug me all fucking day. _

Rich shoved Headphones Kid further down the hallway, and he stumbled and walked on without really giving Rich much of a second thought.  It had always been easier to bully Jeremy than it had been to bully his friend, but Rich supposed this time he needed both of their backpacks for it to work.

Afterwards Jake and him continued walking down the hallway towards their first period, which was once again English.  Was it a school requirement that English be the first class of the day?

**Look to your right.**

Rich did, and then nudged Jake just outside the classroom and pointed to the sign-up sheet on the wall.  “Hey look. Sign up for the play.”

Jake chuckled nervously.  “You still… remember that huh?”

“You still got heart eyes for Christine?”

“Uh…” Jake’s voice faded off mid ‘uh.’

“I’ll take that as a yes.  We have play rehearsal after school today.”

**Neither of you need to sign up.  Mr. Reyes will be happy enough you show up.**

_ Mr. Reyes? _

**The Drama teacher.**

Therefore, instead of signing up, both Rich and Jake turned and walked into English.

Rich tried to pay attention, he really did, because he wanted to know what they were doing in English, but he had gotten almost no sleep, he’d woken up too late to eat breakfast, and maybe the Squip was doing something to mess with his ears, because he couldn’t hear anything the teacher was saying clearly.  She sounded exactly like one of those teachers from Charlie Brown.

By the time lunch rolled around, he was happy to see Brooke and Chloe again, but he also felt ready to go home again, and he was  _ not _ ready for play rehearsal.  He didn’t have the energy that it took to hate Christine today.

At some point during lunch, Jake mentioned play rehearsal, and Brooke somehow roped everyone else into going, even Chloe, and that would probably bring a lot of other students who weren’t as popular as them there.  Rich could tell that made Jake feel a little less nervous, and that made him feel better for half a second before the Squip told him to look over at the sign-up sheet and he saw Jeremy Heere signing up. That resulted in Rich yelling “GAY!” at the top of his lungs and the rest of the cafeteria laughing at him.

And that proceeded to make Rich feel like a piece of shit, because Jesus Christ, what kind of a hypocrite was he?   _ He was also signing up for the stupid play! _  And how many times had Rich emphasized that he wasn’t gay?

So as they all left the lunchroom and Chloe was ranting about ‘that bitch Madeline’ for the trillionth time, Rich decided he was absolutely done and walked outside and spent the last half of the school day on the bleachers by the football field.  It was the first day of school anyway, what was he going to have to do?

He was seriously debating going home and making some kind of excuse to Jake when the Squip spoke up.   **You have to go to play rehearsal.**

_ Whyyyyyy? _ Rich groaned, and he would admit— he absolutely sounded like a whiny little kid.

**At play rehearsal is your opportunity for $200.**

Rich sighed and got up as the final bell rang and found Jake, Chloe, Brooke, and Jenna waiting just outside the theatre.

“Hey, there you are!” Jake called.  “Where’ve you been?”

Rich shrugged.  “It’s the first day of school, so I ditched.  How long have you guys been standing here?”

“We… don’t really know what to do.” Brooke said.  “Like do we just go in, or…”

The Squip sighed.   **Show dominance.**

“That’s exactly what we do.” Rich said, like it should be obvious.  He shoved the doors open and, like someone had pressed a button, they all flooded through the doors.

“Oh thank god, the popular students have arrived.” Mr. Reyes said, and Rich supposed the Squip was right, that he really was that happy they were all there.  All of them moved forward and sat down in various seats, and up on stage Mr. Reyes continued talking. “Hello, everyone! My name is Mr. Reyes. You may recognize me from Drama Class, or my full-time job, at the Hobby Lobby.”

Christine clapped up at the front, and Mr. Reyes shot her a fond look.  “Thank you. I’ve been dreaming of the day I get to stage William Shakespeare’s classic ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream—’”

“YES!” Christine screamed.

“And today, that dream dies.”

Rich hated himself just a tiny bit more when he felt a spark of smugness at seeing Christine disappointed.

“And is reborn!” Mr. Reyes continued.  “Just— slightly mutated. The school has informed me that unless I increase our popularity, our funds will be diverted.  To the Frisbee Golf Team.”

“We need more funding.” Jake muttered.  “Would that really be a bad thing?”

“You wouldn’t get a chance to talk to Christine risk-free.” Rich pointed out, and Jake let out a quiet cough and looked away.

“Which is why our production will be set, not in a pastoral forest, but in a post-apocalyptic future.  And instead of frolicking with fairies, there will be fleeing, from zombies.”

“Don’t you care about Shakespeare?” Christine cried.

Mr. Reyes walked forward and set a hand on Christine’s shoulder as if to comfort her.  “The man is dead.” he said. “Let it go.” He then turned to everyone else. “We will now take a five minute break, so that I can eat a hot pocket.”

**We’re following him out.**

“Alright, Theatre is easy!” Rich called, standing up and leaving.  He shot a glance over his shoulder at Jake to see him walking towards Christine before heading out and following the Squips instructions until he ended up around the corner just out of sight of the bathroom closest to the Theatre.

**Wait here until I tell you.**

Rich sighed and leaned back against the wall for a minute… and another minute… and another.

_ Why are we waiting here? _ he asked eventually.

**Go into the bathroom now.**

Rich sighed and did just that, only to see Jeremy scrubbing at his backpack over the sink.

**Well?**

_ Did you make me come here just to beat Jeremy to a pulp again? _

**Richard.**  Here comes the shock.

Rich groaned inwardly and did the same thing he usually did when this situation came up.  He took all of the anger and annoyance he felt towards the Squip at the moment and shoved it onto Jeremy.  “I told you not to wash that off!” he snapped.

Jeremy jumped and started pretending he was looking in his backpack.  “Where’s my homework…” he mumbled.

“I’m talking to you, tall-ass!” Rich said, storming up to him.  Jeremy shrunk away.

“Why do you call me that, I’m not even that tall…” he muttered into his shoulder.

“Well you could be if you weren’t so hunched over and scared all the time.”  Rich headed to a urinal because he did actually have to pee.

**He’s sneaking to a stall.**

“And the only thing more pathetic,” Rich said without turning around.  “Is how you’re sneaking into a stall to get away from me.”

Jeremy froze.

“Stalls are for girls!” Rich yelled, banging on the stall closest to him.  “Are you a girl, Jeremy?!”

“H-how can you talk to people when you’re… you know.” Jeremy gestured to Rich.

“Confidence.” Rich said, in a voice that definitely sounded confident.  A good thing, because he could never say he felt as confident as he appeared.

**STOP IT.**  It was accompanied by a giant shock.

_ Jesus, what the fuck? _

**Tell him why you beat him up.**

_ Wha— what is that supposed to mean? _

**Tell him about Squips.**

“Uh, I just remembered I don’t have to pee after all…” Jeremy started to walk away.

_ “Don’t move!” _ Rich screamed, and his arm shot forward, but he certainly didn’t remember moving his arm, what the fuck was happening—

**Tell him about Squips, Richard.**

Rich zipped up his shorts, swallowed, and said the first thing he could think of to start this conversation: “You don’t remember me freshman year, do you?”

Jeremy blinked.  “You didn’t go here freshman year—” he started.

“Yeth I did!  Thee! You jutht didn’t notithe!” he covered his mouth as his lisp slipped through, which basically confirmed that this was happening.  “Nobody did.” he muttered, resisting the urge to look away from Jeremy in shame.

Jeremy stared at him.  “What— what are you talking about?”

Rich said nothing, and for a second he was a boy in the lunchroom again, about to start towards Jeremy and Headphones Kids table and ask if he could sit there.  “In freshman year, I was just like you.” Rich said. “A loser. I’d never had a girlfriend, never had sex, and I had no friends. I was a hopeless case.”

“What—”

“And  _ then—” _ Rich paused for dramatic affect.  “Then.” Jesus, could he really do this?  “Then.”

Jeremy raised his eyebrows.  “Then?”

“Then I got a Squip.”

Jeremy looked incredibly confused.  “You got quick?”

Rich rolled his eyes.  “Not quick. Squip.”

“I’ve— just never heard of it before.”

“That’s the point!  This is some top secret shit.  You can’t even look it up on the internet.”  He cast his mind backwards two years to what Nicole Baker had said to him.  “It’s from Japan. It’s a grey, oblong pill. Quantum nanotechnology CPU.”

Jeremy’s face had  _ ‘what’  _ written all over it.

“The Quantum computer inside the pill travels through your blood, implants in your brain, and tells you what to do.”

“What?  That’s not even possible.”

_ “Shut up, tall-ass!” _ Rich screamed, shoving Jeremy against a wall, only to get a slight warning tingle.  He then realized, oh yeah, he probably didn’t have to do that anymore. Rich immediately let Jeremy go and backed off.  Jeremy backed up as far as he could, and Rich couldn’t stop the stab of guilt. “Uh— sorry. Old habits. Look, sorry for treating you like shit all the time.  I only did it ‘cause my Squip said I had to. But now it’s saying you’re not a bad guy, and you might want a Squip of your own. Of course, if you’re not interested…” he made to walk away.   _ Please don’t be interested. _

“Wait!” Jeremy called, and Rich inwardly winced.  This probably wasn’t a good idea. He turned around, keeping the smug look on his face.  “So it’s like… drugs?”

Rich chuckled despite himself.  “It’s better than drugs Jeremy.” he leaned forward, and Jeremy leaned closer too.  Then Rich literally screamed, because that was about all he could do to try and get Jeremy to leave.  “IT’S FROM JAPAN!” Jeremy jerked backwards, but didn’t leave.

“It’s a grey oblong pill, quantum nanotechnology CPU.  The quantum computer in the pill will travel through your blood until it implants in your brain and it tell you what to do.”  Rich pulled Jeremy in until his arm was up around his shoulder. “It’s pre-programed, it’s amazing, and it speaks to you directly.  It helps you act correctly.”

**You’re not selling it, Richard.**

“It helps you be cool, Jeremy.  Picture this, dude: even the teachers love you, no one cares if you’re late, your weekends are a nonstop party.”

And he could tell Jeremy was buying it.  He wanted to slam his head onto one of the sinks.  “Right now,” he said instead. “You’re almost as hopeless as I was.  But, if you buy a Squip, you don’t have to be.”

**Repeat after me.**

“I got a hook-up, this guy works at Payless Shoes at the Menlo Park Mall.” Rich said.  “It’s six hundred.”

“Dollars?!” Jeremy exclaimed.

_ But when I bought one it was only four hundred— _

**Two hundred dollars, Richard?**

Oh no.

“It’s worth it!” Rich called.  “Bring the money tomorrow. You’ll see.”

**Leave.**

“Wait!” Jeremy called again.

Rich turned around, hoping almost pathetically that maybe he had changed his mind.

“Aren’t you gonna wash your hands?”

Well, fuck.

**Okay, chuckle.**

_ I’m… I’m not gonna wash my hands? _

**_Chuckle._ **

Rich chuckled.  “Oh, Jeremy. You know what you need?” he leaned in.  “A Squip.”

With that, he ducked out of the bathroom.

_ Can I please go wash my hands now? _

**Yes.**

…

Rich did not sleep well that night.  When the Squip had said they were technically illegal, he didn’t know that they meant they were planning on getting him to  _ sell a Squip to Jeremy Heere. _

It had already been established that Rich didn’t hate Jeremy Heere.  And he—

He didn’t want to put Jeremy through a Squip.  Please, none of the shocks or the conditioning or the shoving away of people he cares about.  Not to Jeremy. Not the person he would probably be friends with in a different universe, in a universe where he never took the tic tac that was in his head.

But it was kind of too late for that, wasn’t it?  Rich was the one who spent the past year and a half bullying Jeremy, and beating him up and making his life miserable.  Hell, part of the reason Jeremy was probably considering getting a Squip was so that Rich would stop tormenting him. Jeremy did not have any obligation to take Rich’s advice.  The Squip probably wouldn’t even let him give the advice he wanted to. But now Jeremy was probably going to buy this thing, and there was nothing Rich could do. And the worst part is?  He did need the fucking money.

But  _ Jeremy  _ didn’t need a  _ Squip. _  He was fine just the way he was.

There was just no way for Rich to tell him that.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Syncing with someone else's Squip kind of sucks in a way Rich can't really explain. Oh wait, yes he can. It turns you into an even bigger asshole to other people you care about. Or maybe part of that was just him.

Rich’s didn’t think his morning started off all that great, but he honestly couldn’t remember it that well.  He got up and got ready for school, who cares?

As soon as their English teacher let them go write their essays (due the following week) Jake started talking up a storm, mostly about his plan to ask Christine to come over that night and he’d thought their last interaction had gone well, and did Rich think it was a good idea?

Rich refocused after a shock from the Squip.

“Huh?” he asked Jake, trying to put as much of a ‘I’m-genuinely-interested-in-what-you’re-saying tone into his voice as possible.

He apparently _really_ failed to do that, because Jake did a double take.  “Dude are… are you okay? You look awful.”

**Say you’re tired.**

“Oh, yeah, I’m good.  Just didn’t sleep that great last night.”

Jake looked unconvinced.  “Are you sure?”

And if Rich could have, he would have said it.  He would have said: “I have a thing in my head. It’s a supercomputer.  I want it out. Can you help me get it out please?”

“Positive.  What were you saying?” he said instead.  That managed to sound somewhat convincing.

“Um, well, I was going to invite Christine over tonight so I could get to know her better.  And maybe ask her out on an actual date. Do you think it’s a good idea?”

Normally Rich’s heart would cry out in protest, but at this point he was finding it hard to care enough.  So instead he just assured Jake it had been a good idea last year and it was a good idea now.

…

As always, lunch was… a thing that happened.  The Squip had apparently given up on trying to get Rich to care today and had settled for making it look like he cared.  It seemed to work pretty well, because no one else asked if he was okay.

So for all of lunch Rich responded to questions people asked him and made his usual snide comments, and if he couldn’t help but notice the suspicious lack of Jeremy Heere in the lunchroom, he didn’t give it much thought.

Rich found himself in the bizzare mindset of wishing he still had a P.E. class this year.  At least if that were the case he could be forced to muster up enough energy to do something.

How the Squip managed to make him look like he cared when he didn’t he had no idea.  Maybe they just hadn’t been trying that morning.

…

“Hey, are you alright?”

Rich turned to see Jenna standing there next to his locker.  He stared at her as he tried to get the words she’d said to him to register in his brain.

Of course he was fine.  Was there a reason he shouldn’t be fine?

“Yeah.” Rich said.  “I’m great. Why do you ask?”

“You— I’m worried about you.” Jenna said.

“What?”

“Rich, you and I may not exactly be close, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind.  All day you’ve kind of seemed… hollow.”

Rich scoffed, because suddenly Jenna Rolan was the biggest irritation on the face of the planet.  “Hollow? What the fuck does that mean?”

“Like you… lost something.  I’m just trying to make sure you’re okay.”

“Yeah?  And since when is that your job?  Last I checked, you were nothing more than the official notetaker of the popular students.  You have to find gossip, report said gossip to Chloe Valentine, and then give her the credit.  We’re not friends, Jenna Rolan. There’s a reason we didn’t spend a single day with you the past summer.  You don’t have to check if I’m okay. So why don’t you leave me alone and mind your own fucking business for once in your life?”

He immediately felt a stab of guilt when Jenna suddenly looked like she was about to cry.  “What the fuck, Rich?!” she spat. “I was just trying to help.” With that she turned and stormed away, and Rich slammed his locker shut.

The Squip said absolutely nothing, which was good, because if they had Rich probably would have blown up at them too.

For that reason,when Jeremy bumped into him for about the billionth time, since Rich had very suddenly decided to hate the world, he snapped, “You tall-ass, where’s my money?!”

But instead of a reply, Rich heard a voice in his head that sounded exactly like Keanu Reeves.   **Up up down down left right A.**

Rich had just pieced together that that was probably Jeremy’s Squip (because why would Keanu Reeves otherwise be at Middleborough High School?) when he felt a jolt similar to a shock, but not quite the same.  And then he felt himself grin. “You got one!”

That was not a good thing, why was he smiling?

“Yeah, sorry, I meant to go through you, but—don’t hit me!” Jeremy cried, jumping backwards.

“Jeremy, this is _awesome!”_  No it absolutely was not, why couldn’t he move his mouth the way he wanted anymore?  Was this still his Squip?

“I mean, I could’ve used the money.” Rich continued, and _wait what the fuck._ “Things are kinda rough at home if you know what I’m saying…”

_Why the fuck would his Squip make him say that?!_

Then Jeremy said, “Yeah man, my dad drinks too,” and Jesus, if it was possible to make Rich feel any worse for one Jeremy Heere, that was the way to do it.

But outwardly, Rich just threw his hands up.  “Yo, fuckin’ dads, right?! Hey, he usually passes out by nine, you should come over, play X-box. You know with a squip, the only controller you need… is your mind?” Rich grinned at the end of his sentence before Jeremy grinned back and affirmed Rich’s offer.  The two high fived and Rich walked off.

When his own volition returned, Rich immediately found an empty hallway and whirled on his Squip.  “What the fuck was that?!” he hissed aloud.

His Squip didn’t seem to be listening.  In fact, they were staring straight ahead.

“Um.” Rich said.  “Hello? Squip?”

The Squip jerked to attention and said: **Adjusting to new instructions.**

“Wh-what?”

 **Stop talking aloud Richard.** the Squip said, suddenly turning back to Rich and looking and sounding more like themself.   **If anyone sees you you’ll look ridiculous.**

“What—” Rich stopped.   _What just happened?_

**I am now synced with Jeremy’s Squip.**

_Why?_

**Irrelevant.  It simply means we now have to act in ways that help Jeremy as well as you.**

Normally Rich would have no problem with this, if helping Jeremy meant helping Jeremy _without_ a Squip.  But what Rich thought of as helping Jeremy was probably not what his Squip thought of as helping him.

Rich swallowed nervously and started towards play rehearsal, only to be stopped by his Squip before he made it there.

_What now?  And can you please stop controlling my movements?  It’s like… really creepy._

**You are no longer authorized to go to play rehearsal.**

_What?  I thought the whole reason I joined was to help Jake with his Christine thing._

**There is a higher authority that forbids that from happening.**

_A higher authority…?_

Well, apparently Jeremy was his authority now, which was ironic, all things considered.  (And this was an actual ironic situation, Rich hated how often people misused the term.) So why would Jeremy outlaw Rich from helping Jake with Christine?

_Oh, shit.  Does Jeremy have a crush on Christine?_

**Correct.**

Well, he supposed that did mean he couldn’t help Jake anymore.  He was crushed. ~~He really wasn’t.~~  He wished he could keep helping.   ~~He really didn’t.  (That kind of made him feel like shit.  Again.)~~

Instead of play rehearsal, Rich went outside to wait for Jake, since he was his ride home.  He supposed he would hear about how things went with Christine on the way back to his house.

Rich leaned against the wall outside the front of the school.  The door opened after about five five minutes, but instead of Jake, Rich saw Headphones Kid as he walked out of the school.  He looked confused and hurt.

Before even the Squip could stop him Rich blurted: “Are you okay?”

Headphones Kid looked down in surprise, and then glared away.  “And you care why?” he grumbled. When Rich said nothing, the kid spat out, “I hope you’re happy Jeremy bought your shitty supercomputer.  If you even think about hurting him any more than you already have, you better watch your back.”

“You care too much.” It slipped out before Rich even thought about it.

Headphones Kid did a double take.  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“You’re going to get hurt.” Rich said quietly.

“Yeah, well it’s a bit late for that.” Headphones Kid snapped before stomping away.  Rich watched him go.

He didn’t have to worry.  According to his Squip, it was against their programing for Rich to do anything that denied him his ‘desires.’  Those desires didn’t really seem to include Headphones Kid anymore. Rich wished they still did.

A minute later Jake walked out of the building talking like an excited puppy about how Christine was coming over that night.  “And I quit archery.” he declared proudly. “For Theatre.”

“Wow.  I did not expect that.” Rich said honestly.  That was about all he could say anymore, though.  He couldn’t wish Jake good luck, or give him tips, or anything like that.  Because now he couldn’t help this relationship in any way. ~~He wasn’t even sure he’d wanted to in the first place.~~

“Hey, you know Jeremy Heere?” Rich asked.  Because this was part of his job now. He had to help Jeremy become more popular.

“Yeah, I think Brooke mentioned him at lunch.  But isn’t that the kid you beat up?”

“Used to be.  I actually talked to him today, and he seemed pretty cool.  I might want to get to know him.” At least that last part was true.

At least.  At least didn’t even work for him anymore.  At least was a joke.

“Well, invite him to sit with us tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I think I will.” Rich said casually, even though it felt anything but casual in his head.

They pulled up at Rich’s house and Jake waved goodbye.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Rich choked out, despite every part of his brain and heart screaming otherwise.  “I don’t think I’m gonna do Theatre anymore.”

Jake looked surprised.  “What, you’re gonna leave me to figure Christine out on my own?” he asked.  It came out like a joke, but Rich could tell he actually looked a little hurt.

“It’s just not working for me,” Rich said, like it didn’t matter.  Like he hadn’t given Jake a second thought, despite the fact that Jake was what he was thinking about more often than not.

“Oh, okay.” Jake said.  “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

_You matter to me.  I swear._

Jake drove away.

…

Well, Rich had hurt just about everyone today.

That might not be exactly accurate.  He had hurt maybe three people. But it felt a lot worse.  Maybe a more accurate statement would be that everyone got hurt today.

Rich went into his room and collapsed on his bed.  It was too early in the year to have homework, so Rich just let himself fall asleep.

He unfortunately slept through any resemblance of dinnertime.  At least he didn’t have work today, so he didn’t have to worry about that.

And there was that ‘at least’ again.

Rich had never wanted to live by ‘at leasts.’  Personally, Rich never wanted to have to say ‘at least’ again.

But wouldn’t that kind of be an ‘at least’ in and of itself?

Rich decided not to focus on that paradoxical logic and went into the kitchen to get some food.

The fridge was empty.   _What am I supposed to eat?_

**You get paid tomorrow.**

_What am I supposed to do_ tonight?

The Squip said nothing.  Part of Rich wondered if they would have worked out a different way to get the $200 from Jeremy had his Squip not synced with Rich’s.

Rich was jerked from his thoughts by a knock on the door.   _Fuck._  Jeremy.

His father was asleep in his room for once, so Rich scrambled over to the door and opened it quietly, plastering on a smile just before he did so.  He opened the door, and called: “Hey!”, not really worried about being quiet. When his father was out, he didn’t wake up until at least noon the next day.

“Hey.” Jeremy said, and he looked a little unsure of himself, but also much more at ease than he had ever been around Rich before.

That didn’t exactly make him feel great— he still looked pretty anxious.

“You ever played video games with a Squip before?” Rich asked, setting up the X-box.

“Uh… no.” Jeremy said.

Rich set out the games the Squip had made him buy because **your video game collection needs a serious upgrade.**

Rich now had multiple games from 2013, a couple from the few years before that, and no fucking Mario Kart.  No Wii anymore, either— mostly because Matt had taken it with him, but still.

“Uh… I don’t know any of these games.  I really used to just play retro games with Mi— nevermind.” Jeremy cut himself off.

Headphones Kid.  Yeah, he definitely seemed like the retro game type.

“I’ll teach you.” Rich said, putting in Call of Duty.  “Okay, like I said, you don’t actually need a controller.”

To be honest, Rich didn’t know how any of this worked either.  The Squip had never let him play video games before (so why they didn’t throw out the X-box along with insisting Matt take the Wii Rich had no idea).  Why he was doing so now probably had something to do with Jeremy, and the fact that Rich had to help him now. Maybe part of that involved helping Jeremy feel more comfortable around him, and by extension, popular people.

But after a while he and Jeremy both got in the hang of playing with a Squip.  It felt very weird at first, and Rich kept wanting to move his hands along with a controller.  But it eventually made playing the game itself much easier. Rich had to admit it took a little bit of the challenge and fun out of it, and he wouldn’t want to play this way every time, except—

Except now he definitely would play this way every single time he got a chance to play video games.  Something about that made Rich a little sad.

Jeremy seemed to be having fun, though, despite having never played this game before.  The two talked while they played, and easily lost track of time. By the time Jeremy went home it was past midnight, and he seemed much more comfortable with Rich than he had been when got there.  Well, that made Rich happy.

At least.

“We should do this again sometime.” Jeremy said as he waved goodbye.

“Definitely.” Rich replied, and was surprised to find he meant it.  A not-so-heinous ending to an otherwise heinous day. Well, he was going to be an absolute zombie at school tomorrow, but the Squip could probably help with that.

Rich might have actually gotten a decent night's sleep for once— if he hadn’t woken up in the middle of the night from a nightmare about murdering Jenna Rolan with a giant cell phone.

God, did everything in his life have to suck lately?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (The answer is yes. Yes it does.)


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Halloween! Yep, that one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: fire, mentions of suicide

The days passed rather quickly when you didn’t care enough to notice what was happening, and suddenly one day Rich opened the door to his house to see his father talking to his brother.  Matt looked very tense, and his father looked very angry.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming here?!” he snapped.  Rich shut the door quietly behind him, but he didn’t think either of them had noticed him yet.  Was it Halloween already? He checked his phone. No. The day before.

“I did tell you.” Matt said, and his voice was hard with something Rich had never heard when he talked to his father before.  “I tried calling you and texting you several times.”

His father narrowed his eyes.  “Don’t talk back to me—” He raised up his hand, and then, as Rich was about to look away, Matt caught it.

The room went absolutely silent.  Rich didn’t dare speak. His father and Matt had a stare down across the room before, after a second, his father dropped his hand and left the room grumbling.

Matt gave a huff before finally turning and noticing Rich standing by the door.

“Wha— Rich?” he asked.  He looked really surprised.

Rich’s face immediately hardened.  “Yeah, what?” he snapped. Well, _he_ didn’t say it.

“You look— different.”

He probably did.  Last time Matt had seen him, he had still been wearing sweaters and he didn’t have his hair dye.  He also probably wasn’t one to snap at his brother when he had done nothing wrong.

“Oh, _I_ look different.  You’re the one who just stood up to our father!”

Matt turned around and looked to where their father had walked off.  “Yeah, I guess I did.” he muttered. “I took some self defense classes last year.  Just seemed like a good idea.”

“Well, whoop-de-do.” Rich grumbled.  He was about to be forced to stomp into his room and probably lock the door when thankfully, Matt grabbed his arm.

“Rich, we need to talk.” he said.

Rich said nothing, and neither did the Squip, so eventually both of them went into Rich’s room to get some privacy.

Rich sat on the bed and Matt stood across from him.

“Rich, I met Nicole Baker.”

Well, _whatever_ Rich had been expecting Matt to say, _that_ was not it.  “What?” he asked.

“She was the person who sold you a Squip, right?” Matt asked carefully.  He sounded like he was walking on eggshells, and Rich didn’t understand why.

“Yes.” Rich said, and it came out sounding more cold than he would have liked, but he couldn’t even tell if that was the Squip or him.  “What about her?”

“Rich,” Matt said quietly, “she’s dead.”

Rich went very still.  He wanted to ask how she died, but he suddenly couldn’t, which definitely meant it was somehow related to her Squip.

Fortunately, Matt continued anyway.  “She died yesterday. I was going to come down and talk to you because she told me about you and she told me to talk to you, but— I came today instead of tomorrow after she died yesterday.  She, um, stabbed herself. In the head.”

Jesus.

“She also— she told me how to get it out.  Said you needed—” But the Squip must have messed with his ears again, because Rich couldn’t hear him.

“Why would I want it out?” Rich heard himself say, and Matt stared at him.

“Rich, you— you did just hear what I said, right?”

“So?  All that proves is that Nicole couldn’t handle her Squip.” Rich said with a shrug.

Was it possible to punch coding?

“Rich.” Matt said.  “How do you still not get that that thing is a bad idea?”

“I told you not to come.  You’re the one that came anyway.”

_You’re avoiding the question._ Rich thought at the Squip.  The Squip did not reply.

Matt stared at Rich for another second.  Rich could tell how hopeless Matt felt about this and he wished the Squip would let him talk for once.  But they wouldn’t, because then Rich would tell Matt that he didn’t want this thing anymore. At this point the Squip had seemed to accept that Rich didn’t want them in his head anymore.  So instead of trying to change his mind, they were just making it impossible for him to get rid of them.

“Well I—” Matt started, and stopped.  “I have a hotel room at Menlo Park. I’ll be there if you need me.”

“I won’t.” Rich spat, and the Squip let him turn before he saw Matt’s face.   ~~At least.~~  “I have to go, I have work.” he muttered, barely audible.

Matt sighed.  “Okay, Rich.” he said just as quietly.  “I’m leaving for the hotel in an hour.”

As soon as Matt left the Squip spoke up.

**Go find his bag.**

_Why?_  Rich didn’t even have the energy to try and protest, though, and so even while he was asking he was leaving his room and heading outside towards the car Rich noticed for the first time was parked near the house.  The Squip directed him towards the trunk.

**You’re stealing his Jason mask.**

Rich dropped his head onto the trunk.   _Why?  Why am I doing that?_

**You wouldn’t have to if you had bothered to put together a Halloween costume.  You have everything you need for this one except a Jason mask.**

_If we’re thinking of the same costume, don’t I kind of need a_ machete?

**A loaf of bread will do.**

_Oh, but you couldn’t possibly figure out a replacement Jason mask._

**The trunk is unlocked.**

_I hate you._

**I know.**

Rich took the mask out from the trunk.  He didn’t know why Matt had brought a Jason mask.  He sincerely hoped he had just forgotten it was in the bag, but he doubted it.  Rich went back to get his work uniform and hid the mask in his drawer.

He’d already asked for tomorrow off under the guise of taking his nonexistent little brother Trick-or-Treating, so he’d had to work an extra hour every day all week.  He had to work the last couple hours tonight, and then he’d be off for all of tomorrow.

Rich let himself go on autopilot for most of his shift, which was probably a bad idea, since he realized more than once that the Squip was controlling his movements, and he didn’t ever remember that starting to happen.

He got home late that night and Matt was gone.   ~~At least~~ Rich could sleep as late as late as he wanted, since it was a Saturday.   ~~At least~~ The Squip would always wake him up before his father.

~~At least~~ He didn’t have any nightmares for once.

…

The next day, however, he didn’t wake up because of the Squip, but because of a repetitive buzzing on his phone.

Jake: _Rich_

Jake: _Rich im outside r u coming to help settup_

Jake: _Rich_

Jake: _Riiiiiiiiiiiich_

Rich was about to reply when his phone buzzed one more time.

Jake: _Ok im comin in_

Fuck.  Rich jumped up as quietly as possible and managed to make it to the foyer before the front door opened.

Jake didn’t even get a chance to talk before Rich grabbed his hand and pulled him past his father sleeping on the chair in the living room and into his bedroom.

Jake looked surprised, but thankfully didn’t say anything until Rich quietly shut his bedroom door.

“Uh…”

“Sorry I didn’t reply.” Rich said quickly.  “I got home late from work, I was asleep.”

“What was…”

**Let him finish talking before you reply.**

“… that all about?”  Jake finished the sentence hesitantly, like he was expecting Rich to cut him off.  Rich was trying hard not to.

**Sorry, my dad was up late job hunting, so he’s tired too.  I just didn’t want to wake him up.**

“Sorry, my dad was up late job hunting, so he’s tired too.  I just didn’t want to wake him up.”

“I’ve never been in your house before…” Jake muttered, looking hesitantly around Rich’s room.

Oh no.

**Party.**

“Hey, uh, don’t we have a party to set up for?” Rich asked , hoping it didn’t sound as desperate as he absolutely knew it did.

Jake seemed to let it go for the moment. “Yeah, I uh… you have a costume?”

“Yep.” his voice cracked at the end, and the Squip gave him a glare of disapproval.  Rich went over and grabbed his clothes and Jason mask, and then practically dragged Jake out of the house.

When they both got in the car Jake pulled away from the house and kept shooting Rich looks that said he definitely suspected that there was something else going on.

“Rich—” he started.

“Not now.” Rich blurted.  “Not now, please?”

Jake was silent for a really long time.  They were about a minute away from his house when he finally replied.  “…Okay,” he said. “I— okay.”

Rich let out a breath and leaned his head on the window.  When they pulled into Jake’s driveway Rich spoke up again.  “Hey, uh, do you have a loaf of french bread? I need it for my machete.”  His voice, thankfully, sounded normal again.

“Yeah,” Jake said, and his did too.  “You probably don’t want to get anything on it while we’re setting up, so you can leave it in the guest room until you need to change.”

“Gotcha.” Rich said.  He grabbed the costume from the backseat and did just that.  When he made it back out into the living room everyone was there that usually was.  He found himself next to Jenna Rolan. She was always there to help set up, but she never took Jake’s offer to stay the night, while the opposite was true of Chloe Valentine.

He’d never noticed before.

Jenna noticed him staring, and turned.  “What?” she said. There wasn’t any bitterness or anger in her tone, just resignment.

“Nothing.” Rich said, because it wasn’t like he could say anything else.

And apparently the universe took pleasure in torturing Rich, because he got paired with Jenna to set up the bar.  Neither of them said anything at all the whole time, and afterwards they made sure to find people apart that were as far apart as possible.

Finally, about ten minutes before the guests arrived everyone went to put on their costumes.  Brooke was a sexy dog (original and hopefully intentionally revealing), Chloe was a sexy… baby (Rich tried not to think too hard about it), Jenna was a creepy clown (which she could actually pull off really well), Rich finally completed his costume with a loaf of bread grabbed from Jake’s kitchen, and Jake himself was Prince.   ~~It was pretty straightforward, but it absolutely was not fair that _he_ pulled it off so well. ~~

The guests arrived and immediately started drinking like it would be the last time they ever had alcohol.  But it was mostly a first-ten-minutes rush and then it slowed to a trickle when people needed refills, so after a while Rich went and hung out by the bar.

Then about half an hour after the party started Brooke came up to him.  “Have you seen Jeremy?” she asked. “He did say he was coming, right?”

“Yes, Brooke, relax.” Rich said.  “He’ll be here.”

“You sure?”

“This is _the_ fall party, Brooke.  He’ll be here.” As if on cue, Jeremy came in through the door.  “See?” Rich pointed him out, and Brooke rushed over. They started talking, and a second later Christine walked up to him, looking upset— and Rich still hated the part of him that felt smug.

“You okay?” he asked, because this was probably Jeremy’s future girlfriend if Rich knew anything about Squips (and he did), and he had to make sure she was alright.

“Jake and I were supposed to do couples costumes.” she said.

“Yeah, he’s Prince, what’s the— oh.”

Christine was wearing an authentic Renaissance princess costume.

“Yeah.” she sighed.  “Rich, I— will this offend you if I talk about it?  Sometimes I think I offend people without meaning to.  I really hate realizing I’ve done that, because then they feel bad, and that makes me feel bad.  Well, not bad in the sense that they feel bad, more like guilty-bad, and— where was I?”

“Not wanting to accidentally offend me… I think?”

“Yeah I— I’m just not sure Jake and I are good for each other.  Or— maybe it’s not him. I know people say ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ a lot, and I actually do kind of hate that because it is usually ‘you,’ but I think this time it’s actually… I think before I date anyone I need to figure myself out first.”

Rich sighed inwardly.  God, she had no idea how how much he wished he could’ve done that.

“It doesn’t bother you that I’m breaking up with your best friend?”

**No.**

_Because Jeremy likes her._

**Correct.**

“Hey, if you don’t feel it’s right, that’s your decision.”

“Wow, you’re surprisingly okay with this.”

“Hey, Jake can have literally any other girl in this school that he wants.  He’ll get over it.”

Christine gave a tiny smile.  “Yeah, he probably will. Thanks for talking, Rich.”

“Anytime.”  He was surprised to find he meant it.

Christine started to walk away.  “But you know, Jake does that too.”

“Huh?” she asked, turning again.

“He hurts people and offends them without meaning to.”

Christine smiled a little more.  “You have a lot of experience with that, huh?”

Rich shrugged.  “Yes.” He did. Plain and simple.

She grinned.  “Well, then I guess thanks for sticking it out, ‘cause someone has to love that big goof.  You two are actually really cute friends.” Goddammit, she was just too precious to hate.

And yeah, though it was selfish, maybe the fact that she would no longer be dating Jake helped.

Rich’s thoughts were interrupted by an already thoroughly drunk Chloe stumbling to the bar and getting a refill.  Rich stared at her for a second before she very suddenly yelled “HERE!” and shoved her refilled flask in Rich’s mouth.  A cocktail of drinks spilled down his throat.

And the Squip vanished.

Surprisingly, Rich’s brain did not immediately go into panicked overdrive like he’d expected.  Instead, he stood for a minute and basked in the first time his head had been silent in over a year.  Then he reached into the bar, grabbed a red solo cup and filled it with beer. He took a small sip and held onto the cup as he walked outside.  He absolutely did not want the Squip coming back. Not tonight. But he didn’t want to get drunk either.

When he eventually made it outside he found himself on a balcony.  He recognized the balcony from a long time ago, on a night he and Jake stargazed together.  It wasn’t empty now either, although who was out there was different.

“Hi, Rich,” said Dustin Kropp as Rich moved over to stand next to him.  “Long time no see.”

Rich said nothing.

“How have you been?”

“Better than I am.”

“Oh.” Dustin said.  He turned his gaze skyward, and Rich did the same.  The night sky was clear, and Rich could instantly pick out similar constellations from the first time he’d done this, since it was once again November.  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Why?”

Dustin turned back to Rich.  “Hmm?”

Rich turned and looked Dustin full-on in the face.  “Why are you sorry to hear that? We were never close, I ruined your reputation and got you kicked out of your friend group, and then promptly went on to ignore your existance completely until people barely cared you existed.  I was an absolute asshole to you.”

Dustin stared at Rich curiously.  “If you were nothing but an absolute asshole, why are you apologizing?”

“Am I apologizing?”

“Aren’t you?”

Rich stopped talking for another length of time.  “Yes.” he said eventually. “I am so, so sorry.”

And then Dustin said: “Don’t be.”

“What?”

“I mean, yes, I miss spending time with Jake.  He was my best friend. But everything else? You have met the popular students, right?  Jake and Chloe are constantly fighting for dominance as the most popular, Brooke lives in Chloe’s shadow, and Jenna gets tossed to the side without a second glance.  Those four are constantly at each other’s throats in some way, I don’t know how they breathe. I’m glad I got out of there, and I’m sorry you got tossed in.”

Some of what he was saying was right.  Jake and Chloe were in a constant feud, Brooke struggled to stand on her own, and Rich had told Jenna herself everything Dustin had just said— just much more cruelly.  But then Rich remembered all of the trips to restaurants, Jake letting Brooke plan last year’s Halloween party, Brooke asking for Jenna’s specific input on certain topics, Chloe spitting saliva at that boy who called Brooke a bitch, everyone being there for Jake when his parents left, Jake being a live makeup doll head for Brooke and Chloe’s experiments, Jenna going out of her way to ask if people were okay (especially when she knew they weren’t), Jake spending every day with him at his job, Chloe giving Brooke her restaurant choice every time even though she knows Brooke will pick Pinkberry _every time_ , and Jake planning birthday parties for every single one of them— even Jenna, who believe it or not got a smaller, unadvertised party because that’s what she preferred.

“That… was not my experience.” Rich said firmly.

“Huh.  Lucky.” Dustin muttered.

Rich heard a quiet voice at the back of his head and took another sip of beer.

“Hey.” Rich said before he realized what he was doing.  “What would you say if I told you I ate a supercomputer at the end of freshman year and that it kind of forced me to do some stuff I didn’t want to do?”

Dustin gave him a look that revealed absolutely nothing, and then finally said: “I think it would explain how drastically you changed between Freshman and Sophomore year.”

Rich did a double take.  “N-no one knows I went here Freshman Year.”

“You weren’t that kid Jake and I ran into the cafeteria that one day?”

Rich stared at him.  “How the hell do you remember that?” he whispered.

“Um, you looked like you were about to cry, man.  Kind of hard to forget. And then you showed up the first day of Sophomore Year under the guise of ‘new kid’ and with a brand new personality.  Supercomputer sounds about right.”

“You didn’t say anything, though.”

“I figured you had your reasons.  I also figured you were pulling some kind of scheme in order to start dating Jake, since you had literal heart eyes for him.”

Rich stared for a while and said nothing once again.  He wasn’t gay though. He didn’t—

He put his head in his hands.  “Am I that obvious?” he asked.

“Woah, dude, _no.”_ Dustin said, and Rich looked back up.  “I’m just pretty observant.”

“I got that.” Rich mumbled.

“You really have a supercomputer in your head?”

“Yeah, I— I want it out.”

“I would too.  Is there anything I can do to help?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay.  ‘m sorry.  Well, it’s cold as fuck out here and I’m heading inside.  Let me know if I can help in some way.”

“Thank you, Dustin.” Rich said.  Dustin waved in affirmation, walked over to the door, opened, went inside and shut it.

That was when the Squip started to come back a second time.  If it came back now, who knew what it would do. Rich had just done _so_ many things it disapproved of.

And that was what finally caused Rich’s mind to go into the overdrive he’d been expecting, and he took another drink of beer and yanked his phone out.

Rich: _You said you knew how to get rid of Squips how_

Matt responded almost immediately.

Matt: _Mountain Dew Red.  It was discontinued in the 90s.  Rich, what’s going on, are you okay?_

Rich didn’t even read the second half of the text, instead running inside and towards the first person he saw.  “Hey!” he called. When the guy didn’t respond Rich grabbed his shoulder. “Do you have any Mountain Dew Red?!”

The guy looked confused and a little irritated and shook his head.

“Do you know where I can get some?!”

Another head shake.

Rich turned and ran up to another person.  “You got any Mountain Dew Red?” he asked. This person also shook their head, and Rich turned to repeat the process again.

At some point Rich heard a murmuring through the crowd.  People were saying Jeremy had cheated on Brooke with Chloe, and Brooke had caught them.  Oh, that wasn’t good. Jeremy would need a hell of a headline to live that down, whether it was true or not.

And if Rich had to guess, he would be the one providing that headline.

He really needed to find some Mountain Dew Red.

“It looks like normal Mountain Dew, but red!” Rich called.

People were starting to roll their eyes and turn away with murmurs of ‘he’s drunk,’ and Rich was starting to panic.  “SERIOUSLY, _WHERE THE FUCK CAN I GET SOME MOUNTAIN DEW RED?!”_ he screamed.

And now people were laughing, which meant Rich was struggling not to cry.  He ran upstairs before he could think about what he was doing, the singular thought in his head being that Jake had a mini fridge in his room, and he was on his own now anyway.

And when he opened said room, there were two people on Jake’s bed clearly in the middle of having sex.

“Oh, fuck everything!” Rich screamed, slamming the door shut to the screaming of both people.  He was about to take another sip of beer only to find his cup empty. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He dropped the cup and started slamming on the door, people inside be damned.  “I NEED TO GET IN THERE!” he screamed.

He stood back against the other wall and waited until someone came out a couple seconds later.  That ‘someone’ being—

“What the— Jake?!” Rich asked in disbelief.

Jake looked fairly drunk, and also pretty ticked.  “Yeah, what the fuck was that, dude? Maybe knock next time you come bursting into someone’s bedroom?”

“What the fuck were you doing?!”

“Makeup sex with Chloe.” Jake said with a shrug.

Rich pressed a hand to his eyes.  What. The. Fuck. “Wh— C— can I just say, for the record, that that was a COLOSSALLY _BAD IDEA?!”_

Jake rolled his eyes with a smile.  “So? Since when do you care about whether or not something’s a ‘good idea?’”

Rich was starting to hyperventilate, and it seems even Jake could notice that, because the next second he looked concerned.  “Rich, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“You— you don’t— do you have any Mountain Dew Red in your mini fridge?”

“Mountain Dew Red?”

“It’s like normal Mountain Dew, just red.  It was discontinued in the 90s.”

“What?  Then why would I have it?”

Without waiting for anything else, Rich turned and jumped down the stairs two at a time.

“What the fuck— Rich!”

Rich noticed Jeremy on the couch, and it this point it kind of felt like his last hope, because hey, Jeremy had a Squip, maybe Jeremy would know.  His foot caught on some rug, though, so instead of walking up to Jeremy he crash-landed behind the couch. Then he popped back up. “Hey, you got any Mountain Dew Red?” he asked, his voice sounding way too calm for everything that was happening internally.

There was suddenly a screaming voice in Rich’s head, and Jeremy asked something, but he couldn’t even hear him.

The Squip appeared right in front of Rich, who felt himself jumping up and saying: “Warning, warning, warning,” which— well it wasn’t the weirdest part of his night, but it was probably the worst so far.

Rich felt himself walking to the kitchen, propelled by the Squip.  But instead of heading straight there, they stopped by the bar and grabbed a couple bottles of vodka.

The kitchen was empty when the Squip finally sent him inside, and it basically felt like a kid spitting out a piece of food they hated.  He was the food.

Rich backed up against the cabinets of the island in the middle of the room, absolutely terrified.  The Squip hovered above him, and they looked very calm. Rich wished they looked angry. That would be better.  They were just like his father, and a calm-Rich’s-father was always more terrifying than an angry-Rich’s-father.

**Richard.** they said.   **I think we both know that some kind of punishment is in order for what has just transpired.**

“Leave me alone.” Rich said, trying to scramble backwards but suddenly finding himself unable to move.  “Please, just leave me alone.”

**I will not do that, Richard.  You have not behaved correctly tonight.**

God, they sounded exactly like a parent reprimanding their kid.

**And of course, we do have to make sure the incident with Jeremy and Chloe does not become important news.**

Very suddenly, Rich grabbed the bottles of vodka and smashed them both on the ground.  And Rich was whimpering. Literally whimpering. He felt himself climb up and start searching the cabinets for something.  And after a while, the Squip found what they were looking for.

“Please don’t do this.” Rich whispered.  “Don’t do this.”

The Squip struck a match on the box, and Rich immediately started screeching.

“FIRE!” he yelled.  “FIRE FIRE FIRE!”

People started screaming outside the kitchen, the match fell, and Rich heard one very specific voice scream his name.

Then the match hit the vodka on the floor, and Rich’s world became one of pain.

You could probably easily find someone who’s been burned by a candle before.  You could honestly probably find someone who’s had 2nd or 3rd degree burns before.

This… was not any of that.

The heat was intense and Rich could feel his skin burning and blistering at basically the same time.  The fire was painful as well as constant, since Rich couldn’t even move to get away from it— there was a thing holding his body in place— and Rich was pretty sure he could smell burning flesh.  It was probably his burning flesh, now that he thought about it.

~~At least~~ The Squip couldn’t do anything to him if he was dead.

The kitchen door slammed open, and there was Jake standing in the doorway, screaming something.  Probably Rich’s name. Why was he still here? Didn’t he know fires were dangerous? He should leave.

But instead of leaving like a smart person, Jake ran towards Rich like a dumb person.

Rich was very very close to blacking out.

Jake leaped forward and scooped Rich up before shifting to carrying him bridal style.  Rich’s mask fell off with the movement, and he reached for it pathetically, because that was Matt’s, and Rich stole it, and he should give it back.

But Jake didn’t even seem to notice, and ran both of them out the door.

But fire moved incredibly fast, and by the time they made it to the front door it was too consumed by said fire to exit.

Rich tried to climb down from Jake’s arms but all he could muster the strength to do was weakly paw at his chest a couple times.  He was coughing really badly, because the second Jake had pulled him out of the actual fire he had inhaled a roomful of smoke.

“I’ve got you, you moron,” Jake said, and began sprinting for the stairs, and that was a bad plan, because as they climbed the steps the fire roared behind them as it followed. How were they supposed to get down from the second floor?

Jake ran for his bedroom, and kicked open the perfectly functional door without even bothering with the handle.  Then Jake ran across the room, and, using probably the same adrenaline he had used to kick the door down, he kicked the window straight out of its frame.

“What are you—” Rich burst into another coughing fit.  Was he crazy?

“Don’t worry.” Jake said in a very determined voice.  “You’ll be fine.”

Jake turned and jumped backwards out the window.

He twisted his body in midair to make sure Rich was on top of his chest, meaning that when they hit the ground Jake took the brunt of the impact.

Rich was pretty sure he heard Jake screaming now, and his brain seemed to decide _that_ was too much, because that was the last thing Rich heard.

Well, not quite.

**I estimate he’s broken both of his legs.  Good job, Richard.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would it help if I said I was sorry?


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waking up in the hospital severely injured is already terrible enough, Rich doesn't need your commentary, you tic-tac.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw a fanfiction by pastelsuperhero called “Dad’s Heere” that talked about Rich hating his full name because his father used it, and I came to a similar conclusion, just with a different person using his full name. Well, okay, not a person.

The movies are all accurate— hospitals are frickin’ _bright,_ man.

This was what Rich picked up on before anything else.  Probably because it was a little hard to see anything else.  It was just very, very bright.

And Rich was probably on pain meds, because nothing hurt and he couldn’t really see clearly.  Although that could also be the— yeah, brightness.

Rich wished they had just let him be in pain, because right now his _brain_ didn’t feel right, and he had had _enough_ of his brain being messed with.

It wasn’t like that part was over, however, because something that was clearly his Squip was now hovering over his face.

**Richard.**

“No,” Rich groaned, then turned his head to the side and passed out again.

…

The second time his eyes opened there was an actual person in front of him.  Rich must have made some kind of noise to alert this person to his presence, because they turned to him.

“Hello, Richard,” the person said.

Rich flinched.  “Rich, please.” he said quickly.  It came out kind of slurred and mumbled, and it took him a minute to realize it was probably the pain meds he was still on.

**Does your name bother you, Richard?**

“Rich.” the person corrected.  They were a nurse, if the uniform and clipboard was anything to go by.  “How are you?”

“No— meds.” Rich managed to get out.

“Ooh, not for a while yet buddy.  You still need to heal.”

“Don’t like them.” Rich mumbled, but he was already starting to fall back asleep.

“I’ll talk to the doctor—”

…

Everything hurt.

But that was okay, because when Rich opened his eyes he could think and he didn’t immediately feel like falling back asleep.

For the first time he noticed that he couldn’t really move.  As soon as he realized that the reason for why was obvious. Most of his body was in a cast.

Rich groaned, which also hurt, and which also alerted a person to his presence— a different person this time.

“Rich?  Oh my god, finally.”

Rich’s gaze fell on his brother, who was simultaneously the first and the last person he wanted to see.

Matt quickly moved up to Rich’s side, not that he had been far from it.  He had been sitting in a chair nearby reading a book. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m…” Rich stopped and let that sentence fall off a cliff.  What was he even supposed to say?

“Did you light that fire or was that the Squip?” Matt asked, and he looked incredibly concerned.

Oh.  Oh yeah.  Pretty much everyone but him, Matt, and maybe Jeremy probably thought that the fire was a suicide attempt.  God, Jake probably thought—

“It was the Squip,” Rich said quietly.  “What happened to Jake?”

“He was checked out a long time ago.  You’ve been pretty out of it for a really long time.”

“What happened to his legs?  Are they broken?”

Matt’s eyes widened.  “How’d you know that?”

“Fuck.” Rich whispered, and his eyes were starting to water.

“Hey.” Matt said, as if he was reading Rich’s mind.  Well, then again, Rich was starting to cry, so it couldn’t be that hard.  “It’s not your fault.”

“What about the house?”

Matt winced.  “Rich—”

“Matt. What. Happened.”

Matt bit his lip and looked away.  “It’s… gone.”

Rich started to laugh.  Matt turned back to him in surprise.  “Rich?”

“Wow.” Rich said, still laughing.  “I mean, wow. I burned down his house.  Hey, just when you think you’ve come up with every possible way to embarrass yourself in front of your crush, right?”

In the next second Matt looked incredibly pitying.  “Rich…”

Rich sniffed.  “Right?” he asked, and his voice broke, and then Rich started sobbing.

The Squip scoffed from its place in the corner.   **Richard, this is pathetic.**

Matt came forward and hugged Rich as best he could with the body cast.  The Squip was right, it was actually pretty pathetic, because Rich could barely move and Matt was being very careful not to hurt him.

He had no idea how long they both stayed like that.

Finally, when Rich eventually stopped crying, Matt sat back in his chair (still looking very concerned), and asked: “Are you gonna be alright, Rich?”

Rich sniffed one more time.  “Do you know where I can find Mountain Dew Red?” he was shocked the Squip let him ask.  There must have been something wrong with them.

At this, Matt sighed.  “No. Nicole told me that was what could shut down a Squip, but she had no idea how to get it.  I’ve been trying to figure out how to get some since I first heard about it, but I’m not making much progress.  I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize.” Rich said.  “It was discontinued over twenty years ago, it’s kind of already a long shot.”

**It is a waste to even try, Richard.  I am programmed to improve your life, it would be counterproductive to get rid of me.**

“Although I’m surprises they weren’t doing anything to try and stop me from asking about Mountain Dew Red in the first place.” Rich said, glancing over at the Squip.  Matt followed his gaze and seemed to conclude what he was looking at.

“Do you think the fire damaged them?” he asked.

Rich paused.  “That’s… wow, that’s actually a good theory.  Maybe the smoke damaged their processors. I mean, I don’t think they’d tell me either way, but it’s possible.  It could be they thought it wouldn’t matter if I was going to die anyway.”

But instead of making some kind of joke about how Rich shouldn’t insult his IQ ( _“Actually_ a good theory?  What do you mean _actually?”_ ), Matt turned serious again.  “I’m… I’m really glad you’re okay, Rich.”

Rich said nothing.  He honestly had no idea if he was glad he was okay or not.

“Um, Matt…” Rich muttered.  “About the day before Halloween…”

**I would advise against this, Richard.**

“Most of that wasn’t you?” Matt said quietly.

“No, it wasn’t.”  Rich bit his lip. “I, uh, I think your Jason mask melted in the fire.  I’m sorry.”

**Apologizes show weakness.**

“Rich, I literally could not care less.”  Matt reached into his bag again and pulled out a book.  “I brought _A Christmas Carol._  Charles Dickens original version.”

“It’s October.”

“Wrong.  It’s mid-November now.  And it’s also literally the only classic book I own.”

“You’re a dummy.”

“I’m going to read you a couple pages every day and we’ll finish it on Christmas Eve.  Deal?”

**Richard, this will not hold up your image.  Tell your brother you want to get some rest.**

Rich smiled.  “You’re the best, you know that?”

And then came a shock.  Apparently that was still a thing that could happen.  Rich flinched and the heart monitor to his left reacted.

“Rich?” Matt asked suddenly in concern.  “Are you okay? Should I get a nurse?”

“No!” Rich said quickly.  “No, I— there’s nothing they could do anyway.  Just… read, please?”

Another shock.  It took Matt a minute, but he seemed to realize what it was that was happening— or he at least seemed to realize that the Squip was hurting Rich in some way.

Rich had never seen someone’s face fill with such an intense rage so quickly.

“Matt.” he said quietly.

Matt seemed to have to physically calm himself down, but finally, after several deep breaths, he opened the book.

**Your brother is overly emotional when he gets angry.  That is not a good quality to have.**

_Fuck off._

And another shock.

Matt took another deep breath.  “…Okay. Here we go.” Matt cleared his throat.  “‘Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.  The register of his burial was…’”

…

What parts of the day were not spent with Matt were usually spent wallowing in self-loathing and guilt.

Or trying to figure out a way to hug the stuffed bear Dustin had brought him without using his arms.

Yes, Dustin Kropp had brought him a teddy bear.  It said ‘Get Well Soon’ on it and was clearly from the gift shop, but it was also accompanied by a clearly homemade card that said: “Supercomputers Suck!” along with a drawing of the supercomputer from that one Phineas and Ferb episode.  In the picture, Dustin and Rich were both was spraying it with a fire extinguisher.

Did he mention that kid could _draw?_

But most of the day was miserable, because Rich would mostly sit there, unable to move, going over all the ways Halloween could have gone differently.

_If I had taken a little more beer—_

_If I hadn’t been panicking so much—_

_If I had went and found Dustin and asked him for help—_

_If I had explained to Jake what was happening—_

_If I had left the party—_

_If I had tried harder to stop the Squip—_

_If I hadn’t taken a Squip in the first place—_

Rich totally got what people meant when they said they could play the ‘what if’ game forever.

Part of him wished Jake would come visit, but he didn’t.  Rich understood _why,_ but it still hurt that he didn’t.  If he was honest, he wished anyone would visit.  He was incredibly grateful Matt was there, because he didn’t have to come but he did anyway, but the fact that none of his friends visited stung, even if it was warranted.  He wished any one of them would come, hell, he would welcome Chloe coming there just to insult him. But the only person from school who had visited was Dustin when he gave him the bear.

Was it selfish to wish for his friends to show up?  Or could he even think of them as his friends anymore?

**It is unlikely they still view you the same way.  You did burn down Jake’s house.** the Squip mused.

_No, you did._

**Your hand.**

_Your fucking mind control._

**Well, body control would be more accurate, mind control would be—**

_Fuck off._

**None of them know I exist, it may as well have been you.**

Fuck.  They were right.  Besides, the whole reason he’d gotten the Squip was because none of them would like Freshman Rich Goranski.  If Rich wasn’t doing what the Squip said anymore, well, that meant they weren’t friends anymore didn’t it?

**There is no reason for you to not do what I say anymore.  You could continue to listen to me, and you could easily remain friends.**

_You just made the point that, thanks to you, I practically BURNED DOWN JAKE’S HOUSE!_

**It is true that will be a difficult barrier to surpass, but it is not impossible.**

_No._

**Richard.**

_NO!  I don’t want anything to do with you!  As soon as I get an opportunity to drink some Mountain Dew Red I will!_

**It is probable Mountain Dew Red is gone from existance.  It was discontinued long ago, it is not likely still around.**

_It is true that will be a difficult barrier to surpass, but it is not impossible._

The Squip scoffed.   **That is childish.**

_Really?  I rather thought it was turning your own words against you._

**Richard, context is important when any statement it used.  I would have thought you would know that, with your love for English.**

_Mmm… nah, my sentence works.  You just don’t like admitting defeat._

**My point still stands that if you want to remain close to your current friends, you must continue to obey me.**

_Why would you use ‘obey?’  That has such a negative connotation._

**Richard.**

_Well, whatever!  Maybe I don’t think they’re worth it._

**Richard, I am in your head.  I can tell you don’t believe that.**

Rich didn’t reply, because of course they were right.  Because no matter what Rich said they would win in the end, because they were a supercomputer capable of analyzing anything Rich might say before he said it.  You couldn’t win a conversation with a Squip.

How was he supposed to walk around with a Squip in his head 24/7 and not eventually give in to it?  They would win him over someday, by logic or shocks or “body control” or by wearing down Rich’s resistance like they had already spent the past two years doing, or a general understanding that someday they _would_ win.  There was no way to beat this thing unless Rich got it out.

And how was he supposed to that now?  He was in the hospital, in a full-body cast, reduced to force-feeding, teddy bears, and terrible sitcoms on the TV on the ceiling.  He had no access to Mountain Dew Red and little to no access to help getting it; and even if he _did_ get some it was likely the Squip would fight tooth and nail to keep him from drinking it.  He could at least shock Rich badly enough that Rich wouldn’t be able to stay still enough to drink any.

If you asked anyone with half a brain cell they would tell you the Squip had already won.

…

Rich was supposed to be at the school performing in a play right now.  A terrible, disgusting rewrite of Shakespeare. He had gotten a part before the Squip made him stop going, which meant Mr. Reyes was probably going to be his understudy.

God, he was glad he didn’t have to watch that.

And yet, Rich wanted to be there.  Because Jake was in the fucking play and he was so in love with that boy it hurt, and he would have watched and cheered even if he had no idea what the fuck was going on and even if Jake was terrible, and Rich really wanted to see Jake right now— but he also really really didn’t.

Because every time he looked at him he would see the crutches he most likely had and he would be hit with a fresh wave of guilt all over again.

It was 8PM and Rich was pretty sure he was participating in the definition of wallowing when he got a sudden, splitting headache.

“Ow, fuck—”

The headache got a lot worse.  And then Rich started screaming, both out of pain and out of _what the fuck is going on._

Nurses rushed into his room, and in the corner Rich saw a certain supercomputer disappear.

And his head was suddenly absolutely silent.  More silent even than when he drank alcohol.

Rich had another moment of _what the fuck—_

And then he passed out.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, sorry for the rapid fire changes on this chapter. I thought I messed up so I changed the chapter, and then I realized the mess up wasn’t a mess up and the fixing of the mess up was the mess up— sorry, chapter is back to normal now.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get better, finally.

When he eventually woke up again the nurses were wheeling a bed into his room.

On the bed was Jeremy Heere.

“Jeremy?!” Rich called out, forgetting for a moment he couldn’t stand up and only remembering when he couldn’t stand up.  “What happened?”

The nurses said they couldn’t tell him, since it was likely a singular isolated event.

Rich wanted to scream.  He had to know what happened to Jeremy.  Believe it or not, he cared about the idiot a  _ lot. _

Thankfully, his answers came not even five minutes later in the form of Headphones Kid.

He walked over, pulled out a chair, then sat next to Jeremy’s bed.

“Hey.” Rich said, and he glanced over.  “Hey, uh…” Fuck, he actually didn’t know his name.  “Headphoneth Kid.” Well, shit. There was his lisp.  Rich shook that thought away, there were more important matters.

For instance, the kid whose name he still didn’t know had just scoffed and rolled his eyes before turning away.

“No, pleathe!  I’m thorry, I jutht— can you pleathe tell me what happened?  Thomthing happened latht night and I can’t hear my Thquip at all and my head is tho quiet and then Jeremy geth rolled in on a hothpital bed, I jutht— ith he okay?”

Headphones Kid stared at him for a moment.  “Are you trying to trick me or do you actually care?”

Well shit, that didn’t hurt or anything.  “No I— I actually—” Rich stopped, and let the sentence fade off.

Headphones Kid sighed.  “Was your Squip synced to Jeremy’s?”

Rich nodded.

“Then it’s gone.”

Rich felt way too much relief to hear something he already sort of knew.  “How?”

Headphones Kid explained what had happened at the play the previous night, and Rich cut him off when he said the whole cast had gotten Squips.  “Everyone? Like, Jake, Brooke, Chloe, Jenna?” he asked.

“Yes.” Headphones Kid replied.

“Fuck.” Rich muttered, and that might as well be his new favorite word for how much he was using it lately.

Headphones Kid finally finished explaining and then the two sat in a very awkward silence.

“I’m thorry.” Rich blurted, partly to fill the space and mostly because he was going to be giving out a lot of apologies, and this was a good place to start.

Headphones Kid glanced over.  “Huh?”

“I uh, I’m thorry.  For how I treated you and Jeremy, and for telling Jeremy about Thquipth.  Nothing would’ve happened between you two if I hadn’t done that.”

“God, you sound just like Jeremy when he gets upset.” Headphones Kid said, rolling his eyes.

“What?”

“You’re blaming yourself for everything, aren’t you?  Rich, you are at fault for some things, but so is the Squip.  And Jeremy leaving me was  _ Jeremy’s _ fault, not yours.  Therefore Jeremy has to be the one to apologize.”

“Hath he apologized?”

Headphones Kid shrugged.  “Sort of. I’m hoping to get an actual one later when he’s not having his body controlled by a supercomputer.”

Rich winced. “Ugh.  That part thuckth.”

“But,” Headphones Kid continued.  “I do accept your apology for the parts that are your fault.  Still up to you to be nicer, though.”

“What’th your name?” Rich blurted.

Headphones Kid chuckled.  “Michael.”

“Michael.” Rich said.  “Okay.”

…

Michael was there a  _ lot. _  Mostly to check on Jeremy, but he was also a common listener to Matt’s rendition of  _ A Christmas Carol, _ which happened to include a lot of ridiculous voices solely for the purposes of making both of them laugh.

“Jeremy, you’re mithing thome great thuff here, you wanna wake up and hear thith?” Rich asked.

Jeremy slept on.

Michael sighed worriedly, and Rich felt his attempt to cheer him up had probably failed.

Jeremy wasn’t in a coma, mostly because his brain was still active enough that the nurses could call him “asleep,” but he wasn’t being woken up by any of the normal means— shaking his shoulder, talking to him for long periods of time, and turning up the volume on the TV were all things people had tried (mostly Rich, except for the “shaking his shoulder” part).  The nurses felt confident he would wake up soon, but they still didn’t have much of a clue what was going on with him, especially since everyone else had woken up ages ago.

And still no one had come to visit him.  Not even his friends who now understood exactly what Squips were like.

Michael said he thought they were kind of being assholes, but they were also  _ scared _ assholes.

“Thcared of what?” Rich asked.

“You.  And what you’ll be like without the thing in your head.  Scared you’ll be mad they only noticed you  _ after _ you got a Squip.”

“Theriouthly?” Rich asked.

Michael shrugged.  “It’s a valid fear.  You’re just too busy blaming yourself for stuff that’s not your fault to take time to be mad at them.”

“Okay, but it’th not  _ their _ fault!  It’th no one’th fault!”

“I’m sure they’d be glad to hear you think so.  If they ever gather the courage to come visit.”

“Could you tell them?”

“You think I’m talking to them?” Michael raised a teasing eyebrow.

“Yeth.”

Michael chuckled.  “Yeah, I am. I’ll tell them you said so.”  Michael stood up. “I’m going to the bathroom.  I’ll be back.”

“Yeah, go ahead and brag about how you get to go  _ to  _ the bathroom.  That’th okay, I’m not bitter.”

Michael laughed.  “God, thanks for that mental picture.”

“It’th not a mental picture, it’th my reality, athhole.”

“It’s both.” Michael replied.  Then he left.

Rich had gained some movement back in his limbs, finally.  Enough to be able to change the channels of the TV, anyway.  For this reason he was about to turn it to anything other than crappy sitcoms when he heard: “Hello?”

Was Michael back already?

No.  Because Rich turned to his right and saw—

“Ow.   _ Ow ow ow ow ow.” _ Jeremy said, grabbing at his head.

Rich felt the biggest grin take over his face.  “Feelth like you’re mithing a part of yourthelf, doethn’t it?” he asked, because Jeremy was probably just now feeling the aftereffects of the Squip being deactivated and this, at least, was something Rich could relate to him about.  Honestly, Rich probably would have rushed over and hugged him if he could, both because Jeremy was in pain and because he was so happy to see him awake.

Jeremy turned over in surprise.  “…Rich?” he asked.

Rich just grinned bigger.  “Hurth like a motherfucker, too.  Okay, be honest—” Michael wouldn’t tell him “—what are they thaying about me in thchool?”

Jeremy winced.

“That bad?” Rich asked, but he still hadn’t stopped grinning.

“Sorry…”

Rich laughed.  “Thorry? I am finally free of that thiny, happy hive mind!  When I get outta here, the ladieth are gonna love the real Rich Goranthki.”  He stuck his tongue out to finish his proclamation.

Except… Rich didn’t really want a girlfriend right now.  The person he wanted to date had rescued him from a house fire on Halloween, and he was very much a boy.  Except Rich wasn’t gay, was he?

So what did that make him?

Rich felt his smile grow even bigger.  “And the dudeth.” he laughed again. “Oh my god, I’m totally bi!”  The title felt surprisingly right. Better than ‘straight’ ever had, anyway.

Jeremy didn’t seem to realize that Rich’s world was righting itself after two years of being off-kilter.  “Your Squip’s gone? But how?”

“Athk your buddy?  Anti-thocial Headphoneth Kid?”  Oh yeah, he really needed to get used to calling him Michael.  Jeremy looked a little lost and hopeless at the mention of him, so Rich tried to cheer him up.  “He’th been by like, a ton, by the way. What ith he, your boyfriend?” Jeremy looked shocked and scared now, so Rich backtracked.  “Hey, no judgement, jutht curiouth.” he grinned again. “Totally bi now!”

Michael chose that moment to come back from the bathroom.  “I’m sure someone very special will be lucky to have you, Rich.” he said as he came in the door.

Rich grinned at Michael too.  “Hey, you think?”

And then Michael slid the curtain shut on Rich’s face.

Wow.  Okay. No, it’s cool.  It wasn’t like he thought he and Michael had spent the last few days sort of becoming friends or anything.  It wasn’t like he’d been ignored by these two multiple times before and it stung every single time. Whatever.

Michael explained to Jeremy what had happened at the play the same way he had done so to Rich, Jeremy’s father came in behind the curtain and they had some kind of bizarre discussion about pants, and then the topic turned to Christine.

“It doesn’t matter.” Jeremy muttered, just loud enough that Rich could still hear him.  “After what I did, I’m lucky if she wants to go to the same school as me.” There’s a moment of silence, and then Jeremy asks: “What?”

“It’s reassuring.” Michael said.  “He still doesn’t know anything about girls.”

“Okay, so you buy her a rose and compliment her outfit.” Jeremy’s dad said.

“You compliment her intelligence.” Michael suggested.

And Rich, who wanted to be entered back into this conversation other than awkwardly listening to the whole thing, yanked the curtain back and said the first thing that popped into his head.  “No, dude, you tell her thhe excites you thexually.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Michael laughed.  “Do you seriously think that would work? For  _ Christine?” _

Rich shrugged.  “I mean, I’ve had exactly one converthation with her, tho I dunno.”

“How about I decide this one?” Jeremy asked with a smile.  “If you guys really think I still have a shot.”

“Definitely.” all three of them said simultaneously.

…

After that Jeremy’s dad went to go get a nurse, who said Jeremy would probably be able to get out of the hospital later that day as long as nothing was physically wrong with him (lucky).

The rest of the afternoon was spent with doctors in the room doing a bunch of examinations.  Jeremy was cleared to leave, and he said goodbye to Rich with a promise he would visit. Michael had called from the doorway that he would come back only for  _ A Christmas Carol. _

“I mean, that’s completely understandable.” Rich said, sticking his tongue out with a smile.

“No, I was— oh dammit, you’re too hard to tease.” Michael said, crossing his arms in irritation.  “I will find a way!” Then he and Jeremy left, probably to get on of those slushies from 7/11 that Michael seemed to think were the greatest thing on the planet.

And Michael apparently held up on his promise to talk to everyone, because that afternoon Rich heard the distinct sound of crutches just before Jake showed up in the doorway.

“Jake!” Rich yelled, feeling his chest swell and a giant grin spread over his face— he was doing that a lot lately.

Jake looked pretty guilty when he smiled back.  “Hey, Rich. I, uh, I’m sorry I didn’t visit sooner, I just—”

“Ah ah ah, no.  None of that. Come thit down.”

Jake blinked in surprise, though Rich wasn’t sure at what, and then did walk over and pull up a chair.  It took him longer than it usually would have, due to the crutches he had to use to walk. Roch looked away the whole time he was walking over there.

“Hey.” Jake said.  Rich looked over. “If I don’t get to feel guilty about visiting, you don’t get to feel guilty about my legs.”

“Okay.” Rich said quietly.

“You still feel guilty, don’t you?”

“Tho do you.”

Both of them looked away.

Jake laughed a second later.  “We’re both a mess.”

Rich smiled a little.  “Yeah, we are.”

It got really quiet again.

“So, um.” Jake said.  “You—”

“Me.” Rich whispered.

“Did—” Jake sounded so hesitant.  “Did— did you really have a— a supercomputer in your head the whole time we were friends?”

Rich looked away again.  “Yeth.” he said, still whispering.

“Wow.  You’re uh, probably pretty different from what I think I know about you then, huh?”

“I mean—” Rich didn’t know what to say.  Yes, he was very different from what the Squip had projected him as, but that didn’t mean there weren’t moments from the past two years where he and Jake had spent time together without a Squip.  Right now though, Rich was kind of scrambling for examples. “I do know all the conthellationth.” he blurted. “And I do have a brother named Matt who left for college a few yearth ago. He’th a really good perthon, though, tho don’t be mad at him.  He wath avidly againtht Thquipth from the thart, and he wath the one who told me about Mountain Dew Red.”

“Who set the fire?” Jake asked suddenly.

Rich stopped talking immediately.

“I’m sorry, I just— I have to know that.  Was that you or the Squip?”

“That wath the Thquip,” Rich whispered.  “I’m— I’m tho—”

But then Jake sighed in what sounded like relief and pressed his head in his hands.  “Oh, thank god.” he said and now Rich was just confused. “I mean, before I learned about Squips, I thought it had something to do with your father, and that I should’ve pushed more earlier and asked if you were okay.”

“My father?” Rich asked.

Jake looked back at him.  “He hurts you, doesn’t he?”

Rich’s eyes widened, and he looked away again.  There was a lot of looking away involved in this conversation.

“And I uh— I have to talk to you about something involving that too.  But then I learned about Squips and I thought that maybe that got to be too much and I still never noticed that anything was wrong.  And then Jeremy told me just now— like, uh, five minutes before I came here, that Squips could like, actually control you and shit which is really fucked up but like, I’m just really glad I wasn’t that shitty a friend that I never noticed you were suicidal.  And I’m really fucking glad you’re not suicidal.”

“You’re not a thitty friend.” Rich said.  “You’re jutht not the motht obthervant. Bethideth, I don’t think anyone would have guethed Japanethe thupercomputer.  It’th a little ridiculouth to think about.”

Jake chuckled a little.  “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

“Yeth it ith.” Rich said determinedly.  If he could have, he would have crossed his arms along with a nod of affirmation.

“Okay, dude.” Jake said suddenly.

“What?”

“You have a lisp.”

Rich went bright red.  “Um—” he bit his lip and covered his mouth.

“What, no dude, don’t be embarrassed by it, it’s adorable!”

And then Rich went even redder because  _ what the fuck Jake you can’t just say that! _

And now Jake was laughing at Rich’s face, and Rich was saved from this hell by Matt knocking on the door with  _ A Christmas Carol. _

“Hey Matt!” Rich called very loudly.

Jake managed to stop laughing and turned to see Matt.  “Oh, so you’re Matt. I’ve heard a lot about you in the past ten minutes.”

“Charmed, I’m sure.” Matt said and they shook hands as Rich stared at the both of them in horror.  “And you are?”

“Jake.”

Matt’s eyebrows shor him.  “Oh, so  _ this _ is Jake Dillinger.  I’ve heard a lot about you over the past two and a half years.”  Matt raised his eyebrows at Rich. “Wow. I get it.”

_ “Matt!” _ Rich screamed, giving him his best ‘I will murder you in your sleep’ glare.

“Get what?” Jake asked in confusion.

_ “NOTHING!”  _ Rich screamed that part too.  “COME READ THE FUCKING BOOK!”


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Long days at a hospital bring heart felt talks, self-examinations, and more apologies.

The hospital almost felt like Rich’s job again, except for the fact that he couldn’t move, because Jake started showing up every day again, right after school.

They had had many conversations about the Squips themselves, and Jake’s experience with one had apparently been very different from his and Jeremy’s, because while Rich’s Squip had been linked with Jeremy’s enough that it shut off with the Mountain Dew Red, he had still been able to think for himself— or well, about as much as you could with a Squip.  But for the short period of time Jake had had one, he had told Rich his entire thought process had been focused on two things: how awesome he was now and keeping Jeremy from getting the Mountain Dew Red.

Rich ~~at least~~  didn’t suddenly have a Squip without giving any consent.  It sounded terrifying and confusing.

But the talk of Jake’s Squip led back to a different conversation that Rich wasn’t sure he wanted to have.

“Hey, Rich.  Can I ask… you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but… why did you take a Squip in freshman year?”

Rich bit his lip anxiously, but Jake might ask more than once if he didn’t tell him now, and besides, the Squip would say telling someone your insecurities was showing weakness.

Rich wasn’t doing what they said anymore.

“I wanted people to notice me.” Rich said quietly.  “No one really did. Well, okay, sometimes people did, but it was rare and never the good kind of attention.”   _And I kind of wanted a chance to date you, but that blew up in my face in multiple ways, so…_

“It was the bad kind of attention?”

“Yeah, you know.  Bullies. Nicole Baker, who gave me the Squip.  You, once.”

“Wait, really?”

Well, shit.  He probably shouldn’t have said that.

“Uh… no.”

“Rich, what happened?”

“Really, it’s nothing, I—”

“Rich.”

Sighing, Rich managed to get out what happened that day in the cafeteria.  He could tell the whole time he was telling the story that Jake was trying really hard to remember it, and that it really bothered him when he clearly couldn’t.

“Hey, Jake.” Rich said when he finished.  “It's okay.”

“I said that to Jeremy too.” Jake muttered.  “‘You’re kinda hard to notice.’ I said it that time at the mall.  I need to apologize to you both.”

“Jake.  It's really okay.  If I knew back then that you were as oblivious as you are, I really wouldn’t have taken it personally.”

“I’m apologizing anyway.” Jake said, looking at Rich again.  “I’m sorry.” Well, to be honest, he might not have ever been mad at him, but if Rich said that didn’t make his chest feel warm, he was lying.  “I can’t believe I said that. Either time I did.” Jake sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Geez, I’m supposed to be nice.”

“Hey, you are nice.”

“Well then, not to everyone.  Not to the people that matter.”  And geez, if that didn’t hit Rich right in the heart.  “I’m nice to my friends, but they’re not the only people in the universe that value my opinion.  Especially as one of the most popular people in school, I need to think about the possibility of people looking up to me.  Like you. Or like all those times I turned a blind eye when you or your Squip were bullying Jeremy or Michael.”

Rich flinched a little at that.

Jake looked at Rich again.  “How can I get better at reading people?”

“You wanna get better at reading people?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I guess you pay attention to the way people act.  The next time someone does something that sticks out to you, ask them how they’re feeling.”

“That might be awkward.”

“That's how you learn.  It's easier with people you know well.”

Jake nodded thoughtfully.  “Okay. Rich, how are you feeling right now?”

“Kinda proud of you.”

Jake chuckled.  “Thanks.”

Rich smiled.  “Are we done with our self-analysis?”

“For now.”

“Hey.” called a new voice from the doorway.  “I’m here for our daily dramatic reading.” Matt said.

“Hey, Matt!” Jake called happily.  Matt and Jake actually seemed to get along really well, which was good according to Matt, since he was Rich's future boyfriend. (Rich had gained enough body movement back to smack him with a cast every time he said that.)

From the doorway Michael poked his head in behind Matt.  He did indeed come every day for the reading of _A Christmas Carol._  Sometimes Jeremy showed up too, like today.

And for the first time, three other people were there as well.

“Um, hey Rich.” Brooke said as she walked closer to the bed.

“Hi.” Rich said with a smile at her.  “It's good to see you, Brooke.” Rich glanced over at the other person who was glaring at the wall but was also being given away by the anxious fidgeting with her sleeves.  “You too, Chloe.”

“Yeah, well— you stink.” Chloe said, scrunching up her nose.

“I haven’t showered since before I had this stupid cast put on.”

“I hope your going to shower when you take it off.”

“I missed you too.”

Chloe smiled shyly, which looked weird on her.

The third person bounced up to Rich with an overly excited energy.  “Hi, Rich!” Christine called happily. “It’s great to see you. I’m glad you’re not dead!”

“Uh… wow, thanks, Christine.”

“You didn’t appreciate my reference.” Christine said with a mock pout.

“Your reference?”

“Yeah.” Christine grinned bigger.  “I was quoting Jake Dillinger. ‘I remember thinking: I’m glad that girl’s not dead.’”

Jake hid his head in hands while a everyone throughout the room burst out laughing.

“You’re hopeless!” Chloe said, snickering into her hand.

“I was nervous!” Jake protested.

Everyone laughed a couple seconds longer, before Matt pulled up a chair and cracked the book open.  After that people quieted down surprisingly quickly. Apparently word of Matt’s promise to read the book had spread throughout the land.

As Rich looked around the room he noticed Jenna wasn’t there.  “Did you invite her?” he asked quietly to Brooke. Brooke nodded.  She looked sad, which immediately made Rich feel a surge of guilt. Okay, maybe he had more people left to apologize to.

…

Jake remained by the bed as everyone else was saying goodbye, which wasn’t surprising, but this time he looked nervous, which was a little less common after they’d talked some things out on Jake’s first visit.

“Okay, what is it?” Rich asked, once the door shut and they were alone in the room.

“What?”

“You’re acting nervous and weird.” Rich said.  “What’s wrong?”

Jake sighed.  “Okay, you know how I mentioned something I had to talk to you about with your father?”

“Yes.” Rich said hesitantly.  “What about him?”

“Okay, well, I don’t want you living with him anymore.  I get that that’s not entirely my decision, but I can’t sit by and do nothing if I know what’s going on, so…”

“What are you saying?” Rich asked, still very hesitantly.

“I’m offering you a place to live.”

Rich stared at him.  “…What?”

“I bought a room at Menlo Park.  The one near Sbarro. It has two beds.  I’m offering if you want to stay there instead of going back to live with your father again.”

“Wait, when did you buy this room?”

“Couple days after Halloween.  Why?”

Not only did that mean that there had been a couple days where Jake might not have had anywhere to stay, but he also bought a room with two beds fully intending from the start to make this offer, even when he thought Rich had been the one to burn down his house.  “You— you didn’t care that I was the reason you had to find a new place to live?”

“You weren’t.”

“Yeah, but you thought I was at the time.”

“It was obvious you had a lot going on, and that part’s still true.  The last thing you needed was for me to get angry at you.” Jake looked away guiltily and rubbed the back of his neck.  “That’s why I felt so bad when I freaked out and avoided you after I found out about Squips.”

Rich didn't know what to say.  If he wasn’t already in love with this idiot, he would be falling fast.

“You don’t have to answer yet.” Jake said.  “That’s why I’m telling you now. I didn’t want to spring it on you as you were leaving the hospital.”

“Um, yeah.  Thanks for not doing that.” Rich said.  He might have sounded harsher than he meant to, but he really hadn’t expected this.

Jake smiled a little and somehow, the air didn’t feel awkward.  Or in any case, it didn’t feel as awkward as Rich would have expected.  And then Jake moved on to a different topic, and what little awkwardness was there faded entirely.

…

“I still have to stay the night?” Rich asked, trying hard not to rub at his arms because the doctor has said that wasn’t good for them.  Rich had finally, _finally_ gotten his body cast off that morning, and he— well, he had immediately gone and taken a shower because he really did smell awful, but after that he felt the most free he had in a long time.

“We have to make sure everything is okay and you’ve recovered enough to be able to do the rest on your own.” the nurse in front of him said.  “But unless something completely unexpected happens, you will be able to leave, and you’ll be good to go back to school after winter break.”

“Oh, joy.  That is what I’ve missed the most.” Rich said with a roll of his eyes.  He had been excused from his midterms, as well as most of his schoolwork for the year, which he supposed was a good thing, since he had paid attention to exactly nothing his teachers had said all year.  Rich’s entire break was pretty much going to be spent with the rest of the self-deemed “Squip Squad” (well, okay, it wasn’t self-deemed. He’d picked the name and insisted on it, but _come on,_ it was _clever_ ) trying to catch him up on two years of missed material.  Jeremy would be there too, but he had it a little easier.

The nurse finally finished her checkup and then left Rich to stand up and walk around the room and not sit down until Matt showed up.

“Hey, look who’s out of his cast!” he called.

The first thing Rich did was walk over and give him a hug.  “I’m sorry.” he mumbled into his shoulder.

“What, why?” Matt asked as he hugged Rich back.

It had taken Rich a while to gather up the nerve to make this apology.  The others he could put off with the excuse of not seeing them everyday, and never alone, but Matt always showed up, even more often than Jake, and he just hadn’t had the courage.

“I took you for granted.” Rich said quietly.  “You were always there for me, and I just left you behind without a second glance.”

Rich wasn’t an idiot.  Even when their mom had first died and he was only seven, he knew Matt had taken on more than he should have had to.  He had _been_ those clichés of older siblings growing up too fast to take care of the younger one.  Matt had gotten a job as soon as he could and had always had more bruises than Rich ever did.  He had taken time to reassure Rich that he wasn’t abandoning him when all Rich had cared about was popularity.  And then the Squip had showed up and Rich had effectively pushed Matt out of his life, but Matt had kept reaching out to Rich anyway because that was what he had always done.  And Rich had only accepted his help after he had hit his worst point and had no one else to turn to. That made him pretty selfish in his own mind, and there wasn’t really much he could do to fix any of it.

Matt seemed to read all of this in between the lines of Rich’s words.  “Hey,” Matt said, pushing Rich back to arms length. “It’s okay. First of all, you were too young to be expected to do anything at home.  You were only seven.”

“You were only ten.”

“Regardless, I was older, so it fell to me.  You were allowed to be selfish and want things like popularity and a boyfriend, because I made sure you could be.”

“Yeth, but _you_ never got the chance to.”

“Well, we couldn’t both be selfish.” Matt said, and he gave a sad smile, like that made it alright.  “We would have ended up dying.” One way or another, by lack of food or their father or something else entirely.

“I’m sorry you had to do that.” Rich said.  “It wasn't fair.”

“Well, maybe not.  But things are better for me now.”

“You are taking care of yourself, right?”

“3 full meals a day, shower every other day, have a job, have stuff worked out with professors so I’m still getting schoolwork done.”

“You have friends?”

“Yes.  I have to introduce you guys sometime, I think you and Jasmine would really like each other.  She’s majoring in English.”

He _would_ like to meet her.  “Okay, good. You can tell me if you need something and I’ll help, okay?  I promise.”

Matt smiled.  “Okay, Rich. Thank you.”

He wasn’t entirely sure Matt would take Rich up on his offer, but there wasn’t much else he could do.  Well, except for check in every now and then. He’d have to talk to this Jasmine and see if he could get her to tell him if she thought Matt needed help.

“Hey, Matt’s already here?  Are we gonna listen to him read now?” came Christine’s voice.  Then she noticed Rich standing behind him and jumped up. “Rich!  You’re out of your cast!” She ran forward and gave Rich a squeezing hug that might have hurt a little bit, but Rich wasn’t going to say anything.  “I’m _soooo_ glad you’re okay!”

“I’ve been okay for about a month or so, Chrissy.” Rich said, muffled by her hug.

“I know, but now it feels real.  Like, before I knew you were okay but it still kind of felt like you could suddenly get a lot worse because you still had that giant cast on you all the time.  But now it’s off, so that means it really looks like you’re getting better!” and she gave him another hug, which Rich returned in all its sincerity.

Believe it or not, Rich and Christine could have the same easily excitable nature, especially when they got excited about something.  Michael kept joking that when they let Rich out of the hospital they should make sure he and Christine were never in the same room with any breakable items.

“Geez, Chrissy, slow down!” Jake called with a laugh, walking into the room next, followed by Jeremy and Michael together, and then Brooke and Chloe the same way.

“Okay, look.  We all know how exciting Matt can be when he reads and I didn’t want to miss it.  Unless— oh, are you not going to do that anymore?” she asked in concern, looking back to Matt.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Matt asked.

“Because Rich doesn’t have a cast anymore, so he can read the book by himself, can’t he?”

“Of course not!” Rich exclaimed.  “That would take all the fun out of it!  Besides, I can’t deprive any of you from Matt reading Charles Dickens like an idiot.”

“Hey, my dramatic readings are lustrous and beautiful.”

“Do you even know what half the words mean?”

“That’s not important.”

Everyone ended up gathered around the hospital bed, with Chloe, Rich, and Brooke all sitting on it, and Michael, Christine, Jeremy and Jake all sitting in chairs around it.  Matt sat in a chair at the other end of the bed, sitting like he was a grandfather reading to all of his grandchildren. They all remained here to listen to the story for a long time.  (And someone stopped every couple sentences for Rich to explain what something meant, but Rich didn’t really mind.)


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rich realizes that nothing is that easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I haven’t been able to do much writing due to family being in town for Thanksgiving, but here is the next chapter. Thank you for your patience.

After a long time of deliberating, Rich had decided he would take up Jake on his offer for two reasons: one, he really didn’t want to live with his father anymore, and two, the other option was to go with Matt, who had also offered, and not only did Rich feel he wasn’t ready for college, but he still had quite a few people to apologize to.  Okay, there would probably be a high school somewhere around where Matt went to school. It was mostly the second reason. He did promise Matt that he wouldn’t disappear this time.

Jake had been glad when Rich told him, and there had been no problem explaining to Matt what was going on— aside from his annoying wiggling of his eyebrows.  No, the problem came when it was time to get Rich’s things out of his father’s house.

Both him and Matt had been sitting in Rich’s room with all of the things Rich had wanted to take— mostly his clothes and books, along with a couple pictures of him, Matt, and their mother.

They were both currently waiting for their father to fall asleep, since they could hear him in the kitchen.

“Do you think he cares about us at all?” Rich asked quietly.

Matt said nothing for a minute, and they heard the refrigerator door slam in the kitchen.

“Not enough.” Matt said eventually.  “I think he cared about Mom more.”

They both left it at that and then they heard the TV switch on from the living room.

“I remember her pretty well actually.” Rich said.  “I know that goes against the movie clichés.”

“There’s a reason movie clichés are terrible.”

“I don’t remember him.  Not before.”

“That sounds about right.”

They both waited another couple minutes before picking up the several duffle bags and walking out into the living room.  Their father was passed out on the chair that he was always passed out in. Rich opened the front door and Matt shut it behind them.  They took Rich’s bags to Matt’s car and put them in the trunk. Then they both climbed in the car and drove away.

That would be the last Rich or Matt ever saw of their father.

…

“Wow.  This place really is nice.” Rich said with a grin.

Jake’s room— and his too now, he supposed— had two double beds, like promised, two dressers, and several paintings.  There was of course, a bathroom with a shower, and they also had full access to the pool. There was room service, so they never had to worry about making the beds.

“Jakey D, you got a really freaking good deal.” Rich said, collapsing back on the bed Jake wasn’t already standing by.

Jake scoffed.  “So did you. You get to live with me.”

Rich laughed.  “Now that  _ is _ a good deal.”  He stood up a second later to put his duffle bag next to the one Matt had just placed on his dresser.

He turned to Matt.  “Are you leaving now?”  Rich was out of the hospital, out of their father’s house, out of trouble Squip-wise, and Matt couldn’t be expected to put his life on hold for Rich forever.

“Not yet, I’m staying ‘till Christmas to finish  _ A Christmas Carol, _ remember?” Matt said.  “I’m on break at this point anyway.”

“Hey, I’ve got an idea.” Jake called from across the room.  “Rich said your family used to go to Sbarro all the time, and there’s one practically across the street here.  So when Matt does have to leave, how about the three of us go there before you head back?”

Rich started grinning at that idea and looked hopefully back at Matt.  Who was also grinning. “I think that’s a great idea.” he said. And like that the plan was made.

After that Matt went back to his own hotel room pretty quickly and Rich and Jake both decided simultaneously that it had been a long day and they wanted to start getting ready for bed.

Rich took the second shower with the excuse that he would have to take longer due to his burns.  And that part was actually true, while Jake took about ten minutes, Rich had an actual set of steps to follow on a sheet of paper from the hospital that took him almost an hour.  When he made back out into the room Jake was already asleep.

Rich managed to make it into the actual brd relatively quietly— without waking Jake up in any case— and fell asleep with relative ease.

…

**We’ll start with the basics.**

_ The basics? _

**Richard.  I think we both know that some kind of punishment is in order for what has just transpired.**

**You cannot wear that sweater, Richard.**

_ Why not?  What’s wrong with it? _

_ Leave me alone.  Please, just leave me alone. _

**Richard, you are far too much of a loser to have popularity and keep it without my help.**

**I will not do that, Richard.  You have not behaved correctly tonight.**

**Throw those notebooks out.**

_ But— those are my stories. _

**Do as I say.**

_ FIRE!  FIRE FIRE FIRE! _

And there was the pain Rich didn’t think he’d ever forget.  And he could smell his flesh again. That was also permanently sealed into his memory.  And there was so much screaming… and there was Jake, still trying to rescue him like a moron.

**I estimate he’s broken both of his legs.  Good job, Richard.**

…

Rich woke with tears in his eyes.  He sat up quickly, looking around the room, and his eyes fell on a badly glitching figure in the corner.

**Hello again, Richard.**

_ No no no no no no you’re dead.  You’re dead Jeremy got rid of you. _

**And yet here we are.**

_ No no no you’re dead. _

**Richard.**

Rich buried his head in his knees.   _ No, no, you’re dead.  You’re not really here.  You’re not here. You’re. Not. Here. _

There was no reply, so Rich raised his head a second later and saw an empty room.  He buried his head a second later. His breaths were speeding up.

_ Okay, see?  They weren’t really here, you were just freaked out because of a nightmare.  You’re okay, you’re okay. _

Rich didn’t feel okay, and he was still breathing too fast.

_ Calm down, you’re okay, you’re okay. _

Rich raised his head again and looked hard at the empty corner, trying to convince himself.   _ See?  No one is there.  No one else is here but you and Jake.  You’re okay. _

Rich’s breathing finally started to slow down, and he kept looking at the empty corner because apparently that was helping.

By the time Rich felt normal again he was exhausted, and he had no idea how long he had been panicking again or what time it was, but he didn’t want to go back to sleep.

So instead he sat up in bed for who knew how long until the room started to lighten.

…

Jake sighing and stretching in the bed across from Rich was what first alerted him to his presence.

“G’morning, Rich.” Jake said through a yawn.

It had been a long time since the sun had become visible through the window, and Rich was sitting on his bed surrounded by every single shirt he owned.

“Are you ready for some breakfa—” Jake stopped.

What the fuck was he waiting for?  Just pick one.

“Uh, Rich?”

Oh.

He was waiting for someone to tell him which one to wear.

“What are you doing?” Jake asked.

“I don’t—” Rich said, and then he stopped.  “I can’t—” He stopped again and went back to staring at the shirts.

He had worn a hospital gown the whole time he was there, until yesterday when Matt had brought him a change of clothes.  And before that…

Well before that, he hadn’t picked his own clothes in over a year.

God, was he a fucking two-year-old?  It doesn’t matter. Just pick a shirt.

“You can’t what?”

“I— I can’t decide.”

Jake laughed.  “What?”

Rich’s eyes were starting to water.  “I can’t decide, I can’t—”

“You’re serious.” Jake’s tone wasn’t light anymore.  “You can’t pick a shirt? Why not? What’s wrong?”

“I can’t— they never let me— the Squip, I—” Rich buried his head in his knees.

Apparently Jake seemed to get the message, because the next second he was on the bed pulling Rich in for a hug.  “Hey, hey, it’s alright,” he whispered.

“I can’t even pick a stupid shirt to wear.  What’s the matter with me?”

“Nothing is the matter with you, Rich. It’s okay.” Jake said.  “Here, I’ll help you.”

Rich sniffed hard before lifting his head slightly.  “What?”

“I’ll help.  Do you want to wear something new or old?”

“Um.” Pre-Squip.  “Old.”

“Okay.” Jake said, and he took all of the shirts that he had seen before and put them back in Rich’s dresser.  He seemed to get what Rich meant by old. “Short-sleeved or long?”

It was December.  “Long.”

He put all of Rich’s old t-shirts and tank tops away.  “You want a sweater or not?”

“Sweater.”

Jake put all of his long-sleeved t-shirts away.  “Okay. Do you like this one or that one better?” he pointed to a gray sweater and a beige one.

“I like the beige.” Rich said, slowly pulling his head away from his knees.

Jake put away the gray sweater.  “Okay, do you want the beige or the blue?”

“Still the beige.”

“Okay, beige or red?”

“Beige.”

“Okay.” Jake put the red sweater away as Rich slipped off his pajama shirt and put the beige one on.  “Now let’s pick some pants. Do you want to do that the same way?”

Rich nodded, embarrassed.  “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.  Here, do you want jeans or sweatpants?”

They continued this way until Rich had picked out some gray sweatpants to wear with his sweater, a pair of white socks to wear with his tennis shoes, and his winter coat as opposed to his jacket.

“Alright.  We ready to order breakfast?” Jake asked.

Rich groaned and collapsed back onto the bed.  “You do it.” he mumbled.

“One step at a time?” Jake said with a little smile.

“Definitely.”

Jake got pancakes through room service, and they both ate breakfast before heading off to the Jeremy-Rich catchup party at Chloe’s house— mostly because her house was the second largest after Jake’s, and Jake’s was no longer an option.

It took everyone a while to get there, considering there were eight if them— and Jenna was there too, which pretty much confirmed that Rich was the reason she’d never come to the hospital.  He really had to find a time to talk to her.

Matt stopped by for lunch so everyone could hear  _ A Christmas Carol _ — due to promising to read a few pages everyday and meaning it literally.  He was also able to help out with some science stuff, because he was minoring in physics.  As everyone could guess, Rich caught up on English in less than an hour, Jeremy about the same due to having far less to go over, the social studies and science stuff would both be done before the week was out, and all of their extracurriculars barely needed looking at.

As a surprise to absolutely no one, the nightmare came from the studying of math.

“Okay, so if you take log 5 of x—”

“What’s log?”

“Oh, a logarithm.”

“What’s a logarithm?”

“Uh… shit, does anyone know how to explain logarithms?”

They turned to the internet every third sentence.

At about 6PM everyone had decided they’d had enough and decided to watch a movie while Chloe asked her mom to order pizza.

They watched The Lion King, due to everyone knowing Disney and no one wanting to debate over which person’s favorite movie was better than which other person’s favorite movie.

“So are we going to study like this every day?” Rich asked, both the lisp and the mouthful of pizza meaning he had to repeat himself after everyone shot him confused looks.

“Are we doing this everyday?”

“You want to watch The Lion King every day for two weeks?” Michael asked, and Rich stuck his tongue out at him.

“We’re probably coming to my house every day and eating dinner here every day, so yeah.” Chloe said.  “As long as you guys are good with that?”

Everyone gave their affirmation, and like that it was settled.  It would certainly make it easier for Rich to find time apologize to everyone one-on-one.

Except for Jenna.  He really needed to find a way to talk to her.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas!

“…God bless Us, Every One!”

Matt shut the book and everyone waited for a moment in silence around the Christmas tree in Chloe’s living room.

“Wow.” Brooke whispered.

“Oh come on, you _all_ knew what the ending was going to be!” Chloe groaned in annoyance.

“I’ve never heard the original version before!” Christine exclaimed.  “It was really good!”

“You never heard the beginning.” Rich said with a satisfied sigh as he picked up the book from where Matt had set it down.  “That’s my favorite part. It’s written so well.”

“Should we uh, leave you and the book alone for a minute?” Jake asked, raising an eyebrow.

Rich swatted him upside the head with said book, and Jake laughed.

“Okay, book is over, time for presents!” Jeremy called from across the room.

“Wow.  Seems like you don’t appreciate my present, Jeremy.” Rich said.  He mimed wiping a tear away. “My present is the beautiful gift of literature.”

“I want to give Michael and Christine their presents…” Jeremy mumbled.

“Aww…” Christine said, hugging Jeremy from the side.  “I think you’re gonna like yours too.”

They had agreed everyone getting everyone a present would be too much, and so they had gone with a Not-so-Secret Santa, where they’d drawn names and read them out.  Christine had gotten Jeremy, Jeremy had gotten Matt, Matt had gotten Brooke, Brooke had gotten Jake, Jake had gotten Chloe, Chloe had gotten Rich, Rich had gotten Jenna, Jenna had gotten Michael, and Michael had gotten Christine.  But Jeremy had gone out of his way to get everyone a present— despite the fact that he didn't even celebrate Christmas. He had told Rich that he was participating in the group’s celebration because he didn’t want to feel left out, but he also kind of felt obligated to get everyone presents after everything that had happened.  Rich got it. He had done the same thing.

“Okay, Mr. Overachievers, we’re starting with our singular gifts, got it?” Matt said, raising an eyebrow at Rich and then Jeremy.

Rich gave an overdramatic sigh and pulled out his gift for Jenna, which had been surprisingly difficult to figure out.

They went in a circle, starting with Jeremy handing Matt a present that was clearly a book.  Matt opened it to find _The Social Justice Warrior Handbook._  Matt raised an amused eyebrow at Jeremy, who was starting to blush.  “Well— Rich said you’re kind of a social justice nerd, so…” he mumbled.

“Rich hasn’t seen me for two years.  How does he know that hasn’t changed?” Matt asked, giving Jeremy a suspicious look, which caused his face to get redder.

Rich broke the charade by laughing.  “Jeremy, dude, he’s messing with you.” he said, before shooting a fake glare at Matt.  “Which is _rude._  Jeremy is a fragile baby.”

“What?  No I’m not!”

Everyone laughed at that, which meant Jeremy crossed his arms in annoyance, which then resulted in Christine calling him adorable and kissing him on the cheek, making his face even redder and causing everyone to laugh even harder.

When the group eventually quieted down Matt handed Brooke her present, which was a journal accompanied by multicolored pens and dog stickers.  Brooke seemed to love it.

Brooke gave Jake decorations for his crutches that Jake immediately went nuts over, and Jake gave Chloe a High School Musical poster that Chloe looked about ready to murder him for before Jake calmed her down and handed her her actual present of a jacket from a thrift store (Chloe complained unconvincingly about the thrift store part before putting it on and not taking it off for the rest of the night).

Chloe handed Rich two wrapped presents that were also suspiciously book-shaped.  Rich opened one to find a notebook (“because apparently you like to write or whatever”) and the other to find 1984.

“Seriously, how did you know?” Rich asked, flipping through it before hugging both to his chest.

“I asked your brother.”

“Oh, you’re asking for help, Chloe?  Can’t figure out the mystery that I am on your own?”

“Literally half the room asked someone else for help.”

Rich shrugged.  “That’s fair.” He turned to Jenna.

The room immediately went quieter than it had just been, with a nervous shuffling from Jeremy the only thing to fill the silence.  Rich had found time to apologize to every single person (pretty much immediately followed by an apology from the other person to him and then a hug) except for freaking Jenna, because she never showed up to any study sessions.  And he was pretty sure the awkward tension between them was about as subtle as a metaphorical house fire. And he knew from experience about the subtlety of those. Rich handed her the also-obviously-a-book present and waited as Jenna tore it open.

She held out the book in surprise.  It was a called _The Psychology Book._  “Wh- how did you know?”

Rich rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.  “I, uh… asked your mom.”

“Ha!” Chloe exclaimed.  “Hypocrite!” And just like that the awkward energy dissipated.

Jenna’s mom had gladly helped out when Rich told her he wasn’t really sure what to get her, and apparently Jenna had a side interest in psychology.  She gave him a list of books she already had, and Rich had found this one that she did not.

“Um… thanks.” Jenna said quietly, giving Rich a shy smile.  He smiled back.

And then Jenna pulled out her present for Michael, which was very small and thin.

Michael unwrapped it and held up a gay pride patch.

“I figured it’s one that you don’t have yet, and you’re totally crazy about putting patches on your hoodie.” Jenna said.  “I mean, it’s totally cool if you don’t feel comfortable wearing it, and I have a backup—”

“No, this is awesome!” Michael called happily.  “I’m ironing this on tonight! But what was the backup?”

Jenna snickered to herself and handed Michael another thinly wrapped patch.  When Michael unwrapped this one, his eyes got big, and Jeremy leaned over and burst out laughing.

“Well, what is it?” Chloe asked.

Michael turned the patch around to reveal a very realistic-looking lion.

Most of the room exchanged very confused looks when Jeremy started laughing even harder and Jenna continued smirking at Michael, who was staring down at the patch in something akin to awe.

“Uh… I don’t get it.” Matt said.  “Is that an inside joke?”

Jeremy managed to stop laughing his head off long enough to start talking.  “Michael—” he huffed another laugh. “Michael has this— thing for lions that not even he gets,” Jeremy wheezed.  “He thinks they’re the coolest.”

“Because they _are!”_ Michael exclaimed.  “Did you know that lions can leap as far as 36 feet, and their roars can be heard from 5 miles away?!”

“That sounds terrifying.” Jake said.

“It sounds _awesome!_  I wish I could frickin’ _see_ one jump in real life!”  Michael continued to rant for another five minutes about how amazing lions were until Brooke kindly pointed out that they didn’t want to be there all night.

And then Michael handed Christine her present, which (unsurprisingly) was related to theatre.  It was a poster full of words or phrases Shakespeare had invented. Christine had jumped around the room squealing for about as long as Michael had talked about lions.

When she finally sat back down, Jeremy and Rich both started handing out the presents they had gotten everyone else.

Rich had made Brooke and Chloe both collages of many pictures he’d gotten— from the both of them, of the both of them.  He got Christine a Hamilton sweatshirt, he got Michael an Apocalypse of the Damned hoodie (he’d asked for Jeremy’s help with that one), he got Jeremy a blue cardigan (since the Squip had thrown his favorite one out and according to Michael he hadn’t bought a new one yet), he’d gotten Matt a ‘World’s Okayest Brother’ sweatshirt (he had bought a lot of clothing), and he’d gotten Jake something that was sort of for both of them— a Wii.  Yes, a Wii, because he only had so much money (he already had to borrow about $50 from Jake’s personal stash just to but a used one, since he already used most of his own money on it plus the other gifts) and they were cheap— or at least the used ones were. But the point of it was now, even though Jake couldn’t do sports at school anymore, they could both play Wii Sports together.

When he handed the wrapped present to Jake, their hands brushed, and Jake immediately jerked backwards and rubbed his neck sheepishly before taking the present with his other hand.  “Heh, thanks Rich.” he said.

He had been doing that kind of thing a lot lately, and honestly, Rich hated it.  It was similar to the way Jeremy reacted whenever he and Chloe accidentally touched.  Well, okay, not really, there was _way_ less fear involved— as a side note something had definitely happened between the two of them— but he still couldn’t help but wonder if he’d done something wrong.

But then Jake looked ecstatic when he actually opened the present and gave Rich a thankful hug from the side, which just served to make Rich more confused.

After everyone’s presents had been opened from both Rich and Jeremy, Chloe went to the kitchen to get cookies and milk.

And as everyone was eating and talking, Rich _finally_ managed to walk up to Jenna and ask if they could talk.  Which was how they had both ended up sitting at Chloe’s dining room table alone.

Jenna was looking down at her hands, and Rich took a deep breath.  Better to get it over with. “Okay, look Jenna, I wanted to—”

“I’m really sorry.”

Wait, what?

“Wait, what?”

**Wow, you’re repeating your thoughts.  You haven’t done that in a while, am I supposed to be touched?**

Rich’s breath caught, but he quickly brushed the voice away with a gentle shake of his head.  They weren’t really there.

“I just—” Jenna bit her lip.  “I just blurted what had happened to everyone, and I really wish I hadn’t, but I was so _mad_ at you.  You acted like you were better than everyone else and then you tried to kill yourself—”

Was she talking about the fire?  “But I didn’t—”

“I know, but that’s what it looked like!  And obviously I get now why you acted the way you did, but when I didn’t I was telling everyone that you burned the house down based entirely on a hunch, and even if it turned out to be right that was really, really shitty of me and—” Jenna wiped at her eyes.  “I’m sorry, Rich.”

“I thought you were avoiding me because you were still mad at me for what I said to you,” Rich admitted.  Neither of them had to ask what he was talking about.

“I used to be mad at you,” Jenna said.  “That’s why I told people about the fire.  But then when I learned about the Squip I figured that they were at least partially responsible for what you said—”

“Um.  Not really,” Rich muttered.  “That was just me lashing out because I was having a bad day, and you were convenient.”

“Okay, but would you have been having that bad day without a Squip?”

“Um.  Probably not?”

“Point proven.”

“I’m still sorry I said it.”

“I’m sorry I told everyone what happened.”

They both looked at each other for a minute.

“Are we good?” Rich asked.

“We’re good.” Jenna held out her hand.  Rich shook it.

Then when they let go, Jenna smirked at him, and things felt very normal again, very quickly.  “So when are you and Jake gonna start dating?”

And then Rich started choking on nothing.  “What?”

“You haven’t noticed the way he’s acting around you?”

“Okay, that’s not because he _likes_ me!”

Jenna started laughing.  “God, and you’re supposed to be the one of the less blind ones!”

“Hey!” Rich exclaimed, his face starting to heat up, because geez, Jenna, teasing wasn’t nice.  Maybe Rich had a massive crush on Jake, but it wasn’t like it could ever go anywhere. Rich had blown that chance already when he—

Well.

Jenna seemed to pick all of this up in his face, because of course she did.  “Rich,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “No offense, but I think you’re a little biased here.”

“I’m _not—_ ”

“Okay, okay,” Jenna raised her hands defensively.  “I won’t get involved yet.”

“I don’t like the ‘yet.’”

Jenna smirked again.  “Good luck, dumbass. Come on, I want a cookie.”


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Progression of things, in a good sense for once.

Matt, Rich, and Jake all spent Christmas day in the swimming pool, which felt a little backwards, but when you have access to a pool and nothing to do all day, you’re probably gonna end up swimming.

Rich had spent the first half of the morning being taught how to swim, and the second half showing off his now-existing-but-still-very-mediocre skills.  And then they all got out of the pool for lunch (which were lunchables they’d bought late at night the day before) and spent the rest of the day setting up and playing Rich and Jake’s new Wii.  Matt promised that next time he came to visit he would bring some of the wii games that he and his roommate never played.

And since Sbarro was closed for Christmas, Matt was going home the following day.  So he spent most of that night in Rich and Jakes room playing a bunch of boxing on Wii sports (his favorite and Rich’s least favorite).

When Matt left for his room Jake took first shower like he always did.  Rich needed to be careful with his burns less these days, but the two had gotten into a habit of doing so, and now it was just what they did.

It also meant that when Rich got out of the shower Jake was likely already asleep, so there was no one to see him do his own nightly routine of psyching himself up… to go to sleep.

Nightmares were a common occurrence for Rich, so the idea of sleep sometimes made him a little nauseous.  So before going to sleep he would tell himself about twenty times that whatever he was about to see wouldn’t be real, and that it would be better in the morning.  Then he would lay down and wait for the thirty minutes it usually took him to calm down enough to go to sleep.

Needless to say, he was not getting enough of said sleep.  It was even more exhausting to keep up the ruse of getting enough sleep than it was to suffer through not getting enough sleep.

This particular time the nightmare was a bad one.  In all of the bad ones fire was involved, because of course it was, and the Squip was involved, because of course they were, and there was usually some other component added to make the whole thing worse.

Tonight it was Jake coming to rescue him and both of them not quite making it.  They got held up at the front door when part of the ceiling collapsed behind them, and as Jake was trying to figure out a way around the fire roared closer until it was eating them alive.  The Squip was laughing in the background and Jake was screaming his name over and over and wait, that sounded a little too realistic to be part of a nightmare.

And then Rich was back in their room and Jake was shaking his shoulder.  “Rich!” Jake called one more time before he realized he was awake. When he did, his face filled with relief.  “Rich, are you okay?” Jake asked, and Rich, still too terrified and sleep deprived to think properly, said: “Why were you awake this time?”

“I uh, I went to get a drink of water and when I came back you were crying in your sleep.”

That part was right, Rich could feel his face still wet.

“So I tried to wake you up, and— and what the fuck do you mean _‘this time?!’_ ”

Rich immediately realized his mistake and looked quickly down at his hands as he started playing with them.

“Rich, how often do you have nightmares?”

“I mean—” Rich said before mumbling something incoherent into his lap.

“Rich?”

“Every night.” Rich said quietly.

“Every— Rich, how long did you think you could keep this from me?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t have had to keep it from you forever.” Rich mumbled.

“Why not?  Did you expect them to stop?”

“No, but I would only have had to keep it from you until—” he stopped.

“Until what, Rich?”

Rich looked away again.  “I didn’t want to bother you.” he whispered.

“Rich.”

Rich looked up.

_“Please_ bother me.  I promise I don’t mind.  I would rather you wake me up every single night than deal with it on your own.  That’s not fair to you.”

“But—”

“No buts.  You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, but don’t just let me sleep, okay?  Wake me up and we’ll talk about whatever you want until you fall back asleep, or even if you don’t we’ll just talk until morning.  Okay?”

“I—”

Jake raised an eyebrow.

“…Okay.” Rich said quietly, just before Jake nodded in satisfaction and laid down on the bed next to Rich.

Okay, that didn't make Rich start blushing, thank God it was dark.

“So what do you want to talk about right now?” Jake asked.

…

By the time school started it felt completely normal for Rich to wake Jake up in the middle of the night when he had nightmares.  Jake had even done the same thing once or twice, and now it was just another thing the two of them did, like go to Sbarros or play the Wii or go swimming.  (Or reading. Rich was catching up on almost two years of missed reading opportunities, and he was doing so with a vengeance.)

The rest of the break had been full of mostly good developments.  The day after Christmas Rich, Jake, and Matt did go to Sbarros like promised, and Rich and Matt both shared many goodbyes and promises to keep in touch before Matt finally left.  Rich was slowly but surely learning how to do things for himself again. It took him couple weeks, but he was able to pick his own outfits like a normal person. They managed to catch both Rich and Jeremy up enough with everything that they hopefully wouldn’t feel like they were drowning.  Jeremy and Chloe must have talked out whatever was bothering them, because while Jeremy still wasn’t comfortable around Chloe, there was less fear there then there had once been.

And, plot twist— everyone still heard their Squips in their heads.

Michael was actually the one who revealed it, because he apparently knew that Jeremy heard his, and was getting worried enough about him that he eventually threw caution to the wind and straight-up asked if anyone else still heard theirs.

So they were basically all idiots who had thought they were just freaking themselves out and didn’t want to bother anyone else— all seven of them.  Jenna was the one who had suggested a group chat that they could make to go to for support whenever the tic tacs were being bitches.

It was in this chat while on a work break that Rich first spoke about a theory he’d come up with.

Patient Zero: _I think the Squip is part of the reason I never realized I was bi_

Player One: _U think the Squips homophobic?_

Patient Zero: _Fucking grammar, Michael!_

Player One: _Seriously?_

Patient Zero: _I didn’t get to correct anyone’s texting grammar for two years, I am making up for lost time._

Patient Zero: _And no, I don’t think they’re homophobic._

Brookie Cookie: _U think there the reason you didn’t realize ur bi, but u don’t think there homophobic_

Patient Zero: _You too, Brooke!  Grammar!_

Patient Zero: _And I think, if I were to ask them and they were to answer, they’d say something like: “Same sex couples are still an extra barrier to cross in current society and therefore an extra obstacle towards your goal of gaining popularity.”_

Player One: _Damn_

Player One: _I mean that's still really shitty_

Player One: _But I can actually see how someone would listen to that argument_

Player Two: _I totally would’ve listened to that argument_

JusticeforShakespeare: _Me too_

Patient Zero: _Here’s the thing though.  If they had come out and said it like that I definitely wouldn’t have._

Patient Zero: _At least not at first._

Patient Zero: _Maybe I would have by the beginning of Junior Year, but by then I pretty much did what they said without question._

Patient Zero: _But they never said it straight out.  They never even brought up sexuality at all._

Player One: _Im sorry the beginning of ur junior year sucked so much Rich_

Patient Zero: _Grammar._

Player One: _I take back my sincere heartfelt remark_

Jakey D: _Wait, I thought you only realized you were bi after the Squip was shut off_

IAlreadyKnewThat: _Nah, I’d bet a million bucks he was just in denial for a really long time.  I betcha he liked a guy too…_

Patient Zero: _JENNA_

IAlreadyKnewThat: _Rich, you just confirmed that I’m right._

QueenBitch: _Yeah, bad move on your part Rich._

Jakey D: _Who did you like?_

Rich was panicking enough from Jake’s comment that he just typed and sent the first thing that came to mind.

Patient Zero: _Dustin Kropp_

IAlreadyKnewThat: _Rich, that is the sound of me smacking my forehead._

Jakey D: _..._

Jakey D: _Oh_

And Jake said nothing else for the rest of the conversation, which just served to make Rich an anxious mess for the rest of the workday.

And after he had typed it out, the other half of his brain spent the rest of his shift thinking about how much of the stuff the Squip got him to do was accomplished through manipulation.  The subconscious kind of manipulation that Rich probably still had ingrained in his head somewhere.

Today was payday, so when Rich got out he cashed in his check, put half in the checking account he shared with Jake and the other half in his separate account.  It had almost $500 in it now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, there is a group chat now. That’s not going to be the whole fanfiction now, I promise. I just thought this was something Jenna would totally do and it was opportunity for them to be hilarious idiots.
> 
> Also, in case it wasn’t clear:  
> Patient Zero - Rich. Patient Zero is what they call the first person to ever catch a disease, and Rich the Nerd would totally know this term.  
> Player One - Michael  
> Brookie Cookie - Brooke, just because she thinks it cute.  
> Player Two - Jeremy  
> JusticeforShakespeare - Christine. She’s still miffed about what ended up happening with the play.  
> Jakey D - Jake, because it’s Rich’s nickname for him and Jake is adorable like that.  
> IAlreadyKnewThat - Jenna. This is usually her response when someone tells her a “secret.”  
> QueenBitch - Chloe, because she calls herself a queen all the time.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s the first day back at school, and Rich is fairly anxious, probably with good reason.

“Why the fuck would you—” Rich grumbled, shoving the pillow back over his ears.  Jake’s alarm was the stereotypical _BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP,_ and Rich was pretty sure he would rather wake up to cold water being splashed on his face.  “Jake, whyyyyyyyy?”

It was 7AM, far too early for any rational human being to be up.  Unfortunately, high schools were not rational.

“It does the job.” Jake said casually, turning the alarm off.

“Yeah, while murdering your eardrums in the process.” Rich said, even as he proved Jake’s point by climbing out of bed.  Jake went to go order breakfast while Rich opened his drawer to see all his shirts and paused. He had been able to pick his own outfits for a while now, that wasn’t what was bothering him.  Or well, it was, but this time he thought it was just a normal ‘I don’t know what to wear.’

Jake came back in to see Rich looking at his blue sweater and his eyeball tank top on top of the dresser, as well as gently rubbing the burns on his arms.  “You good?” he asked.

“Everyone’s used to me wearing tank tops no matter the temperature.” Rich said quietly.  “They’re used to… Rich Goranski the asshole who’s straight and wears tank tops and doesn’t have a lisp and reads only when it’s required and doesn’t have head issues from a computer in his brain.”

“You’re probably gonna seem pretty different.  Do you want to try to keep up the ruse of Squipped you?”

“No.” Rich said, picking up the blue sweater hesitantly.

“So let everyone stare at you and ask questions.  I’ll throttle anyone who makes fun of you.”

“What, with your crutches?”

“Absolutely.”

Rich laughed at the mental image, his mood successfully lifted.  “Sounds threatening.”

“I’m serious, do you know how much these things weigh?  They’re gonna hurt like fuck.”

“I believe you.” Rich said, still smiling.  “You’ll be like an angry grandma.”

Jake laughed, and there was the familiar heart flutter.  “Low blow, man.” he said, which only made Rich grin wider.

After that Rich went into the bathroom to change and when he got out his breakfast was waiting on the table by his bed.  They’d gotten pancakes again. Mostly because that was what the people who did room service would make. Well, okay, they also made stuff like french toast and eggs, but they needed something they could eat quickly and anything elaborate took longer.

Rich still had no idea how to drive, and Jake was out of commission until his legs healed (which was going to take longer now due to him walking on them at the play), which meant that Brooke was picking them both up and driving them to school, along with Chloe.

“My mom is teaching you how to drive, Rich.” Chloe announced as he and Jake climbed in the back seat.

“What?” Rich asked.

“Chloe’s just bitching because I had to wake her up early to get here on time.” Brooke said.

“I need time to get my makeup done, Brooke!” Chloe exclaimed.

“That’s why I woke you up early.  Get over it.”

“Wow, did you just tell Chloe to get over something?” Jake asked, raising an eyebrow.  “I’m impressed, Lohst.”

Brooke did a mock bow before pulling away.  “Thank you, thank you.”

“You guys drove us around to places for the entire break, I don’t see what the big deal is.” Rich said.

“That was literally just to my house and back.” Chloe grumbled.

“You guys don’t have it as bad as Steven did last year.  He had to pick up all four of us separately plus Abigail.”

“That’s a pretty good point, actually.  Yeah, appreciate what you have, Chloe!” Jake called.

Chloe flipped Jake off from the front seat.  Then she gave a long overdramatic sigh before muttering “Yeah, I’ll get over it.” under her breath.

They got to school and pulled in next to what Rich could now recognize as Michael’s PT Cruiser from which Michael, Jeremy, and Christine were all climbing out of.

“You know, maybe you should drive your girlfriend to school yourself, Heere.” Michael was saying as the group wandered over to join them.  Jeremy and Christine joined hands as they all moved towards the school, and Jeremy gave Michael a look full of mock irritation.

“I don’t— well I would, except my dad needs the car all the time now, and I blew all the money I could even hope to use for saving up for one of my own on a Japanese supercomputer.”

“So take the bus!” Jake called over Rich’s head.  “You can sit in the back seat and hold hands like Freshmen!”

Michael laughed a little.  “And Jenna could take a picture and post about the lovebirds on Snapchat.”

“What lovebirds am I posting about?” Jenna asked, walking up from the other side.

“Jeremy thinks he’s too good to drive his girlfriend to school.” Rich said with a grin.

“Wha— I do not!”

“Jeremy, you know if this relationship is going to work you have to start giving me what I need.” Christine said seriously.  “And I need a guy who can drive. You know, a _real_ man.”

Jeremy groaned before rubbing his forehead with the hand not holding Christine's.  “You all suck. Why do you only ever tease _me?”_

“We don’t.  You’re just really bad at laughing at yourself.” Jake said.  “Observe.” he looked down at Rich. “I am fed up with your snoring and I’m making you sleep in the bathtub.”

“Ah, fuck!” Rich snapped his fingers.  “I knew it was only a matter of time!”

Jake grinned back at Jeremy.  “See? You should react like that.”

**So he should cover it up with a joke and ignore the fear in his chest that whatever someone just said is actually true, no matter how ridiculous it is?  Duly noted.**

_Shut up._

Everyone moved to walk into the school as a unit, continuing with a similar kind of chatter and teasing of Jeremy— okay, yeah, maybe they did tease him a lot.

They entered as a large group to way more staring than Rich was expecting.  And they weren’t staring at the group, they had probably adjusted to the fact that all of them were friends by this point.

They were all staring right at him.

Rich personally felt like he wanted to melt into a puddle.  He felt himself start to fall into his Freshman Year hallway habits of ‘make yourself invisible so no one sees you and stay to the side of the hallway so no one decides you’re worth beating up,’ until suddenly he felt another hand grab his, and looked to the side to see Jake looking at him with concern.  “It’s okay.” he whispered.

Well, Rich was pretty sure his face was bright red now.  He still didn’t let go of Jake’s hand until they got to English.  They also shared their Honors English class with Jenna, so everyone else waved goodbye with promises that they’d all meet up together at lunch, and then the three went into the classroom and Rich sat next to Jake in his seat from what felt like forever ago.  The only difference was Jenna sitting next to Rich on the other side, which she hadn’t done before.

“Hello, welcome back everyone.” said the teacher at the front of the room.  Rich actually didn’t know their name, now that he thought about it. He hadn’t bothered to pay attention that much in the beginning of the year.  “I hope you all had a pleasant break. I’m passing around the schedule for what we’re going to be reading the rest of the year.”

Rich lit up, and Jake chuckled from the seat over.  When the paper was passed out Rich only saw two books on it, which was disappointing until he remembered he could read stuff other than the assigned reading now.  The books they were going to be reading were _The Great Gatsby_ and _Pride and Prejudice_ , which were great but both were books he’d read before.

“I think I’m going to get _Great Expectations_ from the library.” Rich mused as he walked out of the classroom.  He got some baffled looks from nearby people who overheard and swallowed nervously until Jake and Jenna walked out the door behind him.

“My dad read me the ‘kids’ version when I was little.” Jenna said.  “I really liked it.”

“That is unacceptable.  You have to read the actual version with me now.” Rich said, crossing his arms.

“Dude, I was like, four.  I wouldn’t have understood the actual version.”

“Yes, and now you will.  We’re starting a book club.”

“Just the two of us?”

“If other people want to join, they can.  But you are required.”

Jenna rolled her eyes.  “I will consider it.”

“Good.”

Lunchtime came around pretty quickly, and there were three new additions to the table of Michael, Jeremy, and Christine.  There were enough people at the table that there were different conversations buzzing about the group that connected and split up again like a web.

For the first half of lunch, Rich felt over the moon.  At one point he looked around and realized _this_ was what he had been wanting Freshman Year.  A large group of friends who all knew him and accepted him for who he was, and who he accepted for who they were, and all of who were happy.  There was even Jake sitting next to him casually elbowing him teasingly at points or putting an arm around his shoulder.

During the second half of lunch was when it happened.

“Hey.”  The whole table seemed to turn as a unit to see a senior— Joseph, Rich thought his name was.  He was new that year— standing at the edge of said table, staring right at Rich. “Can I ask—”

“Maybe.” Jake said, his voice dangerously low.  This didn’t seem to affect Joseph.

“Why is he still sitting here?” he pointed at Rich, who then shrunk down in his seat.  “I mean, didn’t he burn down Jake’s house? Why exactly are you all still friends with him?”

Rich stared at his shoes and started picking at a loose thread on his sweater.

“Wow, I didn’t know it was National Stick Your Nose in Other People’s Business Day,” Jake spat.

“What?  It’s a perfectly valid question.”

“Hey, asshole.” came Chloe’s voice from across the table.  “Why don’t you fuck off?”

“It’s not your place to ask that, that’s between us and Rich.” said Christine, sounding just as angry as Chloe but more polite in delivery.

“In fact, why don’t you all leave us alone?” asked Jenna, and when Rich looked up to see what she meant by ‘you all’ he saw a group of people who had gathered around the table to see what was going on, some of who were already leaving due to the tone in Jenna’s voice.

Jake leaned closer to Rich to let him know he was there.

“Or what?” Joseph asked.

Jenna leveled him with a glare, which caused almost everyone else to flee.  “I can ruin your social life in about five words.” she said. And everyone remaining quickly ran away.

Joseph scoffed.  “You’re a junior.  In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a year above you.”

“Dude.” came a new voice, and one Rich recognized at that.  Dustin Kropp was standing nearby with his arms crossed. “In case _you_ hadn’t noticed, you’re the only left standing here.  That’s because everyone else knows Jenna Rolan and isn’t a moron.”  He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Beat it.”

Joseph-the-Moron grumbled to himself before walking away.  Jake shot a grateful smile at Dustin, who returned it with a smile of his own before heading back to his own table.

Rich let out a long sigh and rubbed at his arms through his sweater sleeves.  “Sorry, guys.” he mumbled.

“You’re not the one who should be apologizing.” Michael said firmly.

“That was way out of line.” Brooke affirmed.

“Jerk.” Jeremy muttered under his breath.

“Are you okay, Rich?” Jake asked.  “I’m sorry people are such assholes.”

“I’m okay,” Rich said quietly.

“You sure?” Jenna asked from across the table.

Rich nodded and gave a smile that was hopefully small enough that they would still believe it.

It seemed to convince everyone but Jenna, who looked skeptical but thankfully didn’t press the issue.

Eventually, a better mood returned to the table, and Christine started talking about how excited she was that spring was coming soon.  When Michael pointed out that it was the very beginning of January, she corrected herself to mean the spring musical, and then went on to talk about how excited she was and what role she wanted to play and how she absolutely was not going to let it be turned into an abomination like “A Midsummer Nightmare With Zombies” again.

As they all talked Rich managed to slip out of the bench and away, out of the lunchroom and to the nearby hallway.  He sighed and leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes.

“Are you alright?”

Rich didn’t open his eyes.  “Hey Dustin.”

“I’m sorry people are assholes.”

“That’s what Jake said.”

“He’s was right to do so.”

Rich sighed and finally opened his eyes to see Dustin leaning against the lockers to his left.

“You do know Jake’s house wasn’t your fault, right?”

“He said that too.”

“Well, my man Jake is apparently right about a lot.  Do you still feel like it’s your fault?”

“How could I not?  The Squip said themself, it was my body that actually lit the fire, and no one knew about Squips, so it may as well have been me.”

“Okay, but now we do know about them.” Jenna said, and that was when Rich noticed her walking up to the other side of him.  “So we know it wasn’t your fault.”

Rich said nothing.

“Would you have set the fire if the Squip hadn’t made you?” Jenna asked.

“What?  Of course not.”

“Well, there you go.” Dustin said.

“Yeah, but— I mean, I’m the one who took the Squip in the first place.”

“Rich, dude.  You can only blame yourself for so much.” Dustin said.  “Jake’s house really wasn’t your fault.”

“Besides, he honestly seems a lot happier now that he’s out of that house.”  Jenna said. “At least, from where I’m standing.”

That part was actually true.  Jake didn’t seem to miss his old house in the slightest.

“That I believe.  Jake always kind of hated that place.” Dustin commented with a shrug.

Rich sighed.  “I don’t know, guys.  I think I’ll get there eventually.  I just need time.”

“That’s understandable.” Jenna said caringly.

The three of them remained in the hallway for a while in silence.  Suddenly, Jenna smirked towards Dustin Kropp. “Hey, Dustin? Did you know Rich admitted to Jake that he has a massive crush on you?”

“What?”

_“Jenna!”_ Rich hissed, and Jenna cackled.

“Jake asked him who he had a crush on, and he panicked and said you,” she explained.

Now Dustin was laughing too.  “You are hopeless, you know that?”

“Shut up, both of you!” Rich groaned, putting his now bright red face in his hands.

“Aww, do you have a crush on me now, Rich?” Dustin teased.  “We could always pretend to date to make Jake jealous.”

“Not on your life.” Rich said.  “I refuse to let my crush be turned into a bad rom-com.”

Jenna patted his shoulder with mock pity.  “Honey, you’re already there.”

“You know, you could argue every single crush ever in existence was a bad rom-com,” Dustin pointed out.  “There’s a reason they say love is blind.”

The bell rang overhead, bringing an end to their conversation.

About half a minute later everyone walked out of the lunch room.  At the front of the group, Jake spotted Rich, then Jenna, and then Dustin.  The whole group moved over and almost seemed to hover in the background waiting for something.

“Hey, there you are.” Jake said.  “I thought you went somewhere to wallow.”

“That’s exactly what he did.” Jenna said.  “He just picked a crappy spot that was really easy to find.”

“We had to cheer him up.” Dustin said casually.  “Anyway, I should probably go. Will I see you around, Richie?”

Rich looked at Dustin in absolute confusion at the nickname until Dustin winked, and it dawned on him what he was doing.  Rich was about to roll his eyes and make some sarcastic comment that made it clear to him to back off, when suddenly Jake cut in.  “Yeah, yeah, see you around, Dustin. Thanks for sticking up for Rich and all in the lunchroom, which I think we had covered by the way.  We really should be going, bye.” He waved to Dustin as if to make it clear he was the one who should be leaving.

And Rich stared at Jake in half shock and half confusion.

“Sure thing.” Dustin said before waving and walking down the hallway.  Jenna elbowed Rich, and when he glanced over she raised an eyebrow.

Rich rolled his eyes before setting off down the hallway towards his locker alone.  He missed the look of growing understanding the rest of the group was exchanging (bar Jake), due to suddenly being lost in thought.

Was it possible…?

No.  Loving being blind or not, there was no way.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are revealed after everyone goes to Waffle House.

Rich was at work for a long time that afternoon.  Almost six boring hours of taking orders and making frozen yogurt.  He got home at almost 10:30 after being dropped off by Brooke (who he apologized to profusely), and when he walked in Jake was sitting on the bed doing homework.  “Hey, you’re home late.” he said.

“Alex didn’t show up for his shift.” Rich said, before tossing his phone and paycheck on his dresser and collapsing on his bed.  He could shower in the morning. “So I had to cover for the asshole while Abby got to go home early.”

“Ah, Alex and Abby the Alliteration Assholes.”

Rich snorted.  “What, you finally paying attention in English?”

“No, I just have a roommate who likes to read all the livelong day.”

“Wow, can I meet him?  He sounds awesome.” Rich mumbled, already falling asleep.

Jake chuckled.

**Wake up.**

_Fuck_ off.

**We both know you won’t wake up early enough to shower.  You just got off of an extra long shift, how badly do you want to smell tomorrow?**

For once, they had a point.  Rich groaned again and shoved himself up to a half-sitting position.

“You can go to bed, dude, no one’s stopping you.” Jake said from his bed.

“Nah, ‘m still in my uniform and I want to take a shower.” Rich mumbled, rubbing at his already mussed hair.  He sighed and climbed up before grabbing a pair of pajamas and starting towards the bathroom.

“That’s gonna take, like, another hour!” Jake called after him.

“I know!”

He set the pajamas on the sink and tossed his work clothes outside the bathroom to get after taking the shower and put in the wash.

And the world proved once again that listening to a Squip was a terrible fucking idea when Rich almost fell asleep standing up in the shower three times.

He managed to make it without breaking his own legs and changed into his pajamas before heading out to fall asleep, expecting Jake to already be doing so.

Instead he was sitting on his bed staring at something in his hands in what appeared to be confusion.

“Uh, Jake?  What are you looking at?”

Jake jumped and looked up to where Rich was standing as if he hadn’t heard him enter.  “Uh… math.”

That was obviously a lie and they both knew it.  “Jake.”

“Nothing, I swear.  It’s not a big deal.”

“Jake, come on.  We already said we were gonna try not to keep things to ourselves.”

**Yes, and you’re holding up that agreement splendidly.**

Jake sighed.  “I’ll— tell you tomorrow, okay?”

Rich sighed back.  “Okay.” he said eventually.  He moved to go pick up his uniform before realizing it wasn’t there.

“I sent it to the wash for you.” Jake called in explanation.

“Oh.”  For some reason that made Rich’s chest squeeze painfully.  “Thanks, Jake.”

“No problem.”

Rich went to sleep pretty quickly after all of that, and woke up a couple hours later due to a nightmare.  At this point he was used to getting about five hours of sleep at the most, which was probably a bad thing, to be honest.

He probably wouldn’t have woken Jake up that night if it hadn’t been such a habit already— the nightmare hit a little too close to what had been on his mind before he fell asleep and seeing Jake would only make it worse.  But at this point, waking Jake up when he had a nightmare was just what he did, so he walked across the room, nudged Jake’s shoulder gently, and when Jake opened his eyes he went back over to his own bed.

“Do you want to talk or me?” Jake asked, stretching his arms over his head.

“You, please.” Rich said.

“Okay.” Jake replied, and started talking about what he had just been dreaming about, which started with Jake giving some kind of presentation to all of these kids who he had never met before and who were all ignoring him—

“That’s very rude.” Rich said, smirking a little.

“I know, right?  You should pay attention when a total stranger is giving you a presentation on something he clearly knows nothing about.”

The dream then shifted to a journey through the Himalayas, and Jake climbed all the way to the top of Mount Everest to find Edmund Hillary, who commenced to give him a speech about how sometimes giving up on your dreams is what’s best for you—

“From the top of Mount Everest?

“From the actual top of Mount Everest.  I wouldn’t even have know about Edmund Hillary if Mrs. Rodriguez hadn’t gone on that tangent the other day in history.  Oh, I also wouldn’t have known it was him if dream-me hadn’t said: ‘You’re Edmund Hillary,’ because the guy looked exactly like Christine.”

“Ah, those classic dreams of Christine-Canigula-Edmund-Hillary telling you to give up on your goals.  From the top of Mount Everest. Where was Tenzing Norgay in all of this?”

Jake laughed.  “Falling back down the mountain.”

That caused both of them to start laughing until their stomachs hurt, partly because it was funny and mostly because it was probably about 3AM and they were both delirious.

When they both eventually stopped laughing Rich was exhausted again, and rapidly falling back asleep.  Doing so always freaked him out a little, because it was about a 50/50 that he would have another nightmare, but this particular night he was too exhausted to try and stay awake.

By the time Jake asked: “Rich?  You fall back asleep?” Rich was too far gone to answer.

…

Rich woke the next morning not having had another nightmare.  He still had to wake up at 7 in the morning, so it wasn’t like he was well-rested, but he was better than usual.

They both got eggs for breakfast before being picked up by Brooke and heading to school.  Rich got far less stares today than he had yesterday, mostly due no doubt to Jenna being very threatening when she wanted to be— which was sudden and a little surprising, but not exactly unwelcome.

“Do you guys want to join our restaurant tradition?” Rich asked at lunch.  He gestured to him and Jake. “The two of us were planning to go today anyway, since Jake and I are both off work, but you all could come too.  The way it works is we all take turns picking a place to go, and newest members automatically get first pick.”

Chloe shot him a look. “Since when?”

“Since now.  Since I said so, right now.”

“I want to go to Waffle House!” Michael called, and Jeremy and Christine both groaned.

“What’s wrong with Waffle House?” Brooke asked in confusion.

“He only wants to go there because of this book he’s reading that came out earlier this year.” Jeremy explained, as Christine nodded her affirmation.  “It’s called _Simon Vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda._  It’s about a closeted gay kid, and everyone in the book goes to Waffle House a lot, so now he has dubbed it the unofficial ‘gay restaurant’ in his head.”

“Everything in that book is now gay in my head.” Michael said.  “And let’s go to Waffle House.”

“He is the newest group member, so based on Rich’s logic he gets to pick.” Jake said with a playful shrug.

Jeremy rolled his eyes.  “Fine, let’s go to Waffle House.”

_“Yes…”_ Michael whispered, doing the gentlest fist pump Rich had ever seen.

Therefore, after school the whole group went to Waffle House.

Almost everyone got waffles, except for Chloe, who just got a milkshake.

“Do you not like waffles?” Jenna asked.

“Eh.” Chloe shrugged.  “They’re good, but… I dunno.  Not in the mood.”

“We literally came to a restaurant that is all about waffles.” Jake pointed out, raising an eyebrow.

“Not in the mood.”

Rich didn’t realize that he’d forgotten his wallet at home that day until the check came at the end of the meal.

**I could have reminded you of that you know.**

“Shoot.” he mumbled, ignoring the voice in his head.  “Hey, Jake, can you pay for mine? I can pay you back when we get home.”

“Uh… yes, yes I can.” Jake said, and he suddenly sounded incredibly uncomfortable.

Rich shot him a look.  “Dude, I can pay you back.”

“No, it’s not… it’s fine.  Yeah, I got it.”

Rich tipped his head in confusion.  “Are you okay?”

“I’m great.”

Jake was spared from any further questioning when the waitress came back around.

They all paid before Jake grabbed Brooke’s car keys and got up to start walking, due to probably taking longer to get there.  Rich offered to walk with him, but he waved his hand dismissively before leaving.

As soon as he left the door every person at the table simultaneously turned to Rich.

“Dude, you are both so far gone!” Michael called.

“What?”

“We just wanted to wish you good luck with your crush.” Chloe said with a wink.  “But you two have been glued to each other all day, so we haven’t had the chance.”

“What— we’re not—”

“Rich, sweetheart, no offense but it’s painfully obvious.” Jenna said.

“It’s also painfully obvious Jake likes you too!” Christine said, bouncing in her seat.

“Wha— he does not—”

“Okay, you all only recognized it after I practically pointed it out.” Jenna said.  “Because you’re all blind as bats when it comes to romance. But yes, Rich, he totally does.”

“First of all, Jake is straight—”

Jenna snorted.

“—And even if he wasn’t, why would he like _me,_ of all people?”

“ _Because_ he totally does!” Brooke said happily, all but clapping her hands like a seal.

“Yeah, Rich, I’ve been down this road, and self-deprecating thoughts are not a good determination on whether or not someone likes you.” Jeremy said.

Michael shot him a look.  “Wow, _someone’s_ being hypocritical today.  Self-deprecating statements were like, half the reasons you gave me for why Christine couldn’t like you.”

Jeremy shrugged.  “All the more reason I know they’re a bad idea.”

“Ugh.” Rich groaned, crossing his arms on the table and setting his head in them.  “You all suck.”

“Come on, we gotta get you two lovebirds home!” Brooke sang as everyone else climbed up from the table.

“We’re not lovebirds.”

_“Suuuuuure.”_ Chloe said, nodding slowly along.

Rich growled through his teeth and threw up his hands before stomping towards the car to the infuriating laughter of everyone behind him.

…

When they got back to the room Jake walked over to his bed and sat down with a definitive huff that definitely meant something was up.

Rich decided not to comment and grabbed his wallet before handing Jake the five bucks that his meal had cost, which Jake accepted remarkably quickly before turning away.

“Okay, that’s enough.” Rich said, sitting down on Jake’s bed.  “What is going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re acting weird about me paying you back five bucks, you’ve been awkwardly looking at me and looking away all day, you’ve also been staring into space all day, and there’s still that thing from last night that you were staring at and acting like a cryptic weirdo.  What is going on with you?”

“Nothing’s going on with me.”

“Jake, we both know that’s a big fat lie.”

Jake sighed.  “Okay, I— I saw your paycheck.”

Rich tipped his head in confusion.  “Huh?”

“Last night, when you got back up to shower really late I thought I’d put your uniform in the wash and your paycheck and phone on the nightside table, just to save you the trouble, and then I saw your paycheck was for $80, which was weird, because you only ever put $40 in our bank account—”

Rich immediately tensed up.

**Well, this conversation sounds like it’s going somewhere interesting.**

“So then I looked up minimum wage, and I thought the money you get is only half of what you should get, but the paycheck I found was for $80.  So then I spent the next day wondering if there was actually something wrong with that or if I was just making a big deal out of something, because I’m not exactly good at analyzing this kind of stuff.” Jake rubbed the back of his neck.

“But you know, if you aren’t being horribly cheated by your boss, you should have a bunch of other $40 amounts somewhere, so is someone, like, taking those from you?” Jake finished.

Rich had no idea what to say.  “N-no, no one’s… I put half of my check in a seperate account,” he muttered.

Confusion flickered across Jake’s face.  “What? Why? Are you saving up for something?”

“Yeah, you know…” Rich said quietly, looking away.

“No, I don’t.  Is it for a birthday present or something?”

God, why did he have to make him say it?  “No, it’s for when you— well, you know.”

“Me?  It’s for when I what?”

**I can tell you what to say if you would rather not have this conversation.**

“It’s for when you kick me out and I have to find a place to live!” Rich blurted.

The room went absolutely silent.

“W-what?” Jake whispered it, and to Rich’s shock, when he looked up Jake looked almost hurt.  “Do you really think I would do something like that?”

“I mean,” Rich mumbled.  “I took the Squip because you wouldn’t have liked me Freshman Year, so now if I’m not listening to them anymore—”  He could sense the pieces clicking into place in Jake’s head. “Then I figured it’s only a matter of time before you realize that I’m not worth it, and then I’ll need somewhere to live and some money to—”

“Rich, what the _fuck?!”_

Rich flinched.

“What on earth gave you the indication that I don’t like you anymore?!  What have I been doing that could possibly suggest that?”

“Well, that’s— that’s what they always said—”

Rich realized the words that were coming out of his mouth as soon as he said them.  And now he was crying and looking away. “I just—” he started. He sniffed. “That’s what they did.” he sniffed again.  “I mean whenever— whenever they wanted me to do something and I wasn’t listening, they would find a way to bring you into it almost every single time.  And it worked! It would always get me to listen!”

Rich brought an arm up and scrubbed at his eyes.  “And that was one of the things they said over and over.  That you wouldn’t like me without their help. And I think they’ve done studies about your brain hearing something over and over and starting to believe it—”

Jake reached forward and pulled Rich to his chest, who promptly started to sob into his shirt.

“Well then.” Jake said quietly, once Rich had calmed down.  Jake sniffed, and Rich wondered if maybe he was crying too. “I guess I’ll just have to tell you for the next two years that I like you just the way you are.”

Rich let out another sob, and Jake squeezed him tighter.  “I mean it.” Jake said. “You’re _so_ much better without that thing in your head.  You’re so much happier. I mean, maybe not right now—”

That caused one of those broken half-laughs you hear about.

“But you seem so much more like yourself.  You seem so much more real. I think your lisp is adorable, I think you’re love of reading is frickin’ smart, I think you’re even more adorable when you get excited about something, and I think you’re a really cute nerd.”

“That was three ‘cute’ compliments and one ‘smart’ compliment.” Rich mumbled into Jake’s shirt, and Jake laughed.

“Well, then you’re really cute and only a little smart.” Jake said, sounding amused.

“I take offense to that.”

They both laughed a little at that, and the following hours found them both curled up under Jake’s covers watching movies on the TV across the room.  It was late, he was pretty sure it was sleeting outside as well as freezing, and Rich didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world.

“Rich?” Jake said at one point.  “Can I ask you something? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

Rich hummed his agreement, knowing the question would probably have to do with the breakdown he’d had.

“Why did your Squip bringing me into things get you to listen?”

Rich tensed again.  That wasn’t what he’d expected.  “Um—” he bit his lip. “Maybe because I’d admired you for a really long time?”

“Admired me?” Jake asked, and there was something else in his voice.

“Yeah, I mean, you were really popular and you seemed really happy and kind of awesome, you were just— kind of everything Freshman Me wanted to be.”

“Wow, I was only _kind_ of awesome?  I’m not sure if I should take offense or not.”

“Shut up.” Rich said with a little laugh.

_Oh yeah, and it was also probably because I had a massive crush on you, even back then when I was way deep in The Nile River.  That might’ve factored into their reasoning._

“I just— I care about you a _lot.”_ Rich said quietly.  “I don’t know if you know that.”

“I do know that.  And I care about you a lot too.” Jake said just as quietly, and that was the end of that conversation before Rich blurted out every single thing he felt about Jake.

“We should probably get ready for bed, huh?” Rich asked, sure a little disappointment showed in his face and voice.

“Or, you know, we could just stay here.” Jake said, pulling the covers up further.  “We can get ready for bed tomorrow.”

“That sounds like a really good idea.” Rich said, and before he knew it he was tucked into Jake’s side fast asleep.

He had no nightmares that night.

…

They both woke up to a loud annoying alarm on the nightside table to Jake’s right.  It took them both a couple moments to remember everything that had happened the previous afternoon and night, which was about the same amount of time for them to realize that Rich was still pressed against Jake in his bed.  It took another couple seconds to realize that emotional growth was exhausting, and neither of them wanted to get it.

“Ugh.” Jake mumbled.  “Why did I make that my alarm?”

“Tha’s what I said.” Rich mumbled.  “We’re skippin’ today, right?”

“Uh-huh.” Jake said, turning the alarm off before collapsing back against the bed.  They both fell back asleep in seconds.

When Rich woke up again it was at least a couple hours later.  He probably would have fallen back asleep because there was a hand running through his hair, but when he shifted the hair slowed down and that didn’t feel as nice.

“Jake?” Rich mumbled, only for the hand to immediately freeze.  “What’re you doing?”

“Uh… nothing.  You’re dreaming.” Jake said hurriedly.

“No, ‘m way too conscious.” Rich mumbled, shifting in the bed.  He wasn’t that conscious yet, though, because he shifted closer to Jake again.  “I didn’ tell you to stop.”

He heard the sharp sound of Jake’s breath catching before his hand slowly started to move in Rich’s hair again.

Rich smiled in his half-asleep state.  “Mmm, that’s better.” he mumbled, moving closer until his head was tucked into Jake’s chest.  And the hand moving again combined with Jake’s warmth did cause him to fall back asleep.

Then, when Rich woke up a third time Jake was gone.  He sighed at the emptiness of the bed and sat up and stretched before he realized what had happened last time he’d woken up, and now his face was bright red.

He didn’t have any time to dwell on that, though, because a second he located Jake’s voice at the door talking to someone.  He quickly buried his head back in the pillow and hoped Jake would think he was still asleep.

When Jake walked back in Rich could hear him setting something on the desk before he heard the sound of crutches signifying he was walking somewhere.  They were getting closer. Shit he was coming over to the bed. A second later Rich felt a hand gently shaking his shoulder.

“Hey, Rich, I got breakfast.” he said.

“What time is it?” Rich groaned.

“About noon.”

**You got up far too late to get anything done today.**

“So it’s more lunch than breakfast?” Rich said, sitting up and stretching again, hoping his face wasn’t as red as it was a few seconds ago.

“That’s true.” Jake admitted.  He seemed nervous. Maybe he was thinking about the hair thing too.

Rich got up and walked over to the desk, grabbing one of the plates of pancakes and sitting on his bed.  Jake did the same before sitting back on his own. It was silent for a minute as they both ate.

“Hey, Rich?” Jake said slowly.

Rich glanced over.  “Yeah?”

“How did you know you weren’t… straight?”

Rich nearly choked on his pancakes.

“I… um.  That’s…” _A really loaded question._  “Wow.  Okay. Do you— do you think you’re not—”

“I don’t know.” Jake muttered, fidgeting with his sleeves.  He still had on his jacket from yesterday, as neither of them had ever changed into pajamas.  It was pretty rumpled. “That’s why I’m asking.”

“I mean… I probably would have realized a lot sooner if I didn’t have a Squip in my head, but—”

**Richard, I would advise against this.**

“—I guess what really helped me realize it was when I realized I had a crush on a guy.”

“Oh, you mean Dustin Kropp?”

Rich was so caught off guard by the question and by the fact that Jake still remembered that tiny part of the chatroom conversation that he just blurted out: “What?  No.”

Shit.

Jake blinked in surprise.  “Wait, a different guy?”

“Uh… maybe?”

**For a future English major you are not exactly good with words.**

“Who was it?” Jake asked, because _duh_ he asked that, that was a natural step forward in the direction of this conversation, if someone tells you they have a crush, you usually ask them who it is.

“Um…” Rich could feel his face heating up, and it was probably bad that he was starting to have to rely on Jake’s social blindness in order for him to not find out who he was referring to.  Honestly, sometimes Rich really appreciated it, but sometimes it was annoying that Jake could never read a room or the fact that Rich _didn’t exactly want to have this conversation_.

“Wait, if a different guy helped you realize you were bi, when did you have a crush on Dustin?”

“Oh for pete’s sake, Jake, I never had a crush on Dustin, I had a crush on you!” Rich screamed in annoyance, only to slap his hands over his mouth a second too late.

Jake’s eyes widened across the room, and Rich was pretty sure his face was bright red in part embarrassment, part mortification.

“Really?” Jake asked quietly, and Rich had no clue what to say.

“Huh.” Jake muttered after a second.  “That actually makes a lot of sense.”

“It— huh?  It does?” Rich asked, because hey, it was out there now and he couldn’t take it back, might as well get some clarification.

“Just— some things you’ve done over the years is all.  Did you quit play rehearsal because you didn’t like me pining after Christine?”

“Oh, um, actually no.  That was because of Jeremy’s crush on Christine and when our Squips synced I had to help him before anyone else.”

“Oh.” Jake said.  There was a pause and then he blurted: “Oh, I um— I like you too.  I should probably clarify that.”

Wait.  What?

“Y-you do?!”

“I did ask you how you knew you weren’t straight.”

“I didn’t know that was because you liked _me!”_ Rich exclaimed, shoving the pancakes aside as he jumped up.  “Geez, Jenna _told me—!”_

“Jenna did what?”

Rich dragged a hand over his eyes.  His brain felt like it was glitching, and maybe he was dreaming right now, because Jake liking him didn’t fit into his set image of things, or into his set image of Jake.  “Jenna Rolan, Keeper of all Knowledge, apparently knew that we both liked each other and weren’t saying anything about it.” He looked back at Jake. “You’re being serious?  This isn’t some prank?”

“I wouldn’t do that.” Jake said, and a couple more seconds of silence found both of them sitting on Rich’s bed.  “I was serious, you know.” Jake said, and he smiled a little. “I like you more without the Squip.”

“Apparently.” Rich breathed.

“How long have you had a crush on me?”

“Well, I mean— Matt would tell you since the beginning Freshman Year.  But honestly, I think it was earlier than that.”

Jake raised his eyebrows.  “Really?”

“Um—” Rich was bright red again.  “Would you believe me if I said I kind of really liked watching you in gym class in 8th grade?”

Jake burst out laughing, and Rich’s face turned an even darker red.  “Hey, don’t be mean! You know how many guys have probably had sexuality crises because of you?!”

“Yeah, well I only like one of those guys,” Jake said teasingly, and Rich went bright red again.

They were quiet for another minute before Jake spoke up again.  “So now what? Do we kiss?”

“I think that’s usually how this goes.” Rich said.  “But only if you want to.”

Jake leaned forward and pressed his lips on Rich’s.  And then they both sat there for a while. They didn’t use tongue, they didn’t dissolve into desperation, because they both seemed to get it wasn’t necessary.  That they could do this again any time they wanted.

They did, however, forget to breathe for a while until Rich finally pulled away gasping.  “I need a minute, I have smaller lungs than you.” he said, sticking his tongue out.

Jake laughed, and then there was another one of those comfortable pauses.  “Hey.” Jake said, his voice mischievous. “We don’t have to tell anyone we’re dating just yet, do we?”

Rich got where he was going, and managed to grin back even as his heart soared at the fact that Jake had just confirmed that they were dating.

“No, I think they need to stew on this for a while.  Make them annoyed by how idiotic we are. And I can give you a forlorn look every now and then so no one gets any ideas.”

Jake laughed.  “Did you really do that?”

“Well, not anymore.  Not for real.”

Jake kissed him again, for less time than before, and smiled when he pulled away.  “Good.” He said definitively, and followed it up with, “When do we tell them?”

“My birthday.” Rich answered without hesitation.  “Where there will be absolutely no chocolate cake.”

“Wait, you don’t like chocolate cake?”

“Nope.  The Squip seemed to think that wasn’t acceptable.”

“Because it’s not.  Oh my God, I’m breaking up with you.”

“I would probably be more heartbroken had we not gotten together mere seconds ago.”

“Fine, I’ll break up with you on your birthday.”

“Well then no one would ever know we were dating!”

Jake gave a clearly fake groan.   _“Fine!_  You have until then to win back my favor.”

Rich grinned again, pretty sure this was the happiest he had ever been in his whole life.  “I’ll see what I can do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (In case anyone was wondering, Simon Vs The Homosapiens Agenda actually did come out in April of 2015.)
> 
> Thank you so much for reading my story! This chapter actually took a lot longer than expected because that thing happened when characters take over the story, and I could not for the life of me get these idiots to do what I wanted them to. I hope the reveal of all of their feelings was satisfying, and again, thank you for reading this.
> 
> (Oh also, if anyone wants to me to do a one-shot based on this story or just in general, comment and I might do it. I don’t do smut, sorry.)

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my first story on this website. Leave kudos and comments and all (that’s what you guys say, right?)


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